Consideration of Senate Message: Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023

The opposition will not be supporting these amendments, which make very little difference to the fundamental flaws and weaknesses in this government's approach to the housing policy challenges facing Australia. Of course, one of the fundamental flaws of what is proposed is that the so-called Housing Australia Future Fund will be capitalised with $10 billion of additional Commonwealth government borrowing. It's a highly cynical exercise in being able to quote a large number—$10 billion—but it's not $10 billion that's going to be spent on housing. It's going to be a much more complicated exercise, producing much lower amounts. This also comes at a real cost to the Commonwealth and to taxpayers. With a 10-year government bond at four per cent, it'll cost around $400 million per annum in interest-servicing costs on the debt, and of course that will simply add to inflationary pressures in the economy.

Critically, a very serious policy objection to the convoluted and complicated framework this government has devised is that this fund provides no long-term certainty, as disbursements from the fund will be entirely reliant on the financial performance of the fund's investments in equities and other financial products. If the fund had been established in the last financial year, the Commonwealth would have lost approximately $370 million, on top of the $400 million in interest costs that the Commonwealth would have been required to pay. In other words, rather than providing any money at all towards the policy objective of funding additional social and affordable housing, the Commonwealth would have gone backwards by $770 million, and not one house would have been funded. It is for these very good reasons that the International Monetary Fund has rightly been very critical of these kinds of funds and has specifically warned against the proliferation of such funds.

And of course, this policy measure will do nothing for renters in the private market. It will do nothing for Australians who want to purchase a home. As has been pointed out by a number of speakers in this debate, with 1.5 million additional people coming to Australia over five years, the quantity of additional housing needed is massively in excess of the outcomes that will be delivered, even if this policy achieves the high expectations that the present government has of it—although, as the shadow minister for housing has rightly pointed out, there's every likelihood that those expectations will not be met at all.

The process that we've seen here is yet further evidence that the so-called Housing Australia Future Fund was an ill-thought-through policy, hastily put together by a party, the Labor Party, that was looking for something that would help its members get through television and radio interviews when being asked about housing, but does not go to the substantive issues. The policy does not guarantee that a single home will be built before the next election. And these amendments certainly make no difference to that fundamental flaw. The policy proposal embodied in this legislation, together with the amendments that are put before the House this morning, will do nothing to help those first home buyers struggling to get into the property market. The government cannot say how many homes this fund will build, where those homes will be located or when the fund will first make a return. There's a troubling lack of detail—although, sadly, that is all too common in the approach this government takes on so many policy fronts.

The simple fact is that this government's policy framework and policy agenda on housing is in tatters. It's clear from Australian Bureau of Statistics figures that dwelling approvals have hit their lowest point since the days of the Gillard government. They're at their lowest level in over a decade. Detached housing approvals, as at April of this year, were over 15 per cent lower than at the same time last year, and all the evidence suggests that we're going to see a further, continued decline.

This Labor government has no idea how to energise and activate the private sector to deliver the housing volumes that Australians need. The reality is: it has always been the private sector that has overwhelmingly constructed the great bulk of homes in which Australians live, and, to address the housing needs of Australians, it is very important that the private sector is supported and encouraged to do its work. Of course this government is putting all kinds of barriers in the way of the private sector, including a new round of very troubling industrial relations changes. This policy and the amendments before the House today are not supported by the coalition.