MATTERS OF URGENCY
Senator BARBARA POCOCK (South Australia) (17:11): I move: That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: That house prices are rising at their fastest rate in 4 years and Labor is making the crisis worse as their policies, including the $180 billion tax breaks for landlords and the 5% deposit scheme, are pushing prices up and homeownership further out of reach for renters and first home buyers.
Every day, more Australians are losing hope of ever owning a home. There is more bad news every day. Home values have shot up by 39 per cent over the last five years—39 per cent!
That's an extra $230,000 on the median house price. Meanwhile, wages have grown by just three per cent a year over the same period. That is 39 per cent compared to 15 per cent.
Our housing system is broken. It's rigged to make the rich richer, the banks richer and the developers richer. Meanwhile, first home buyers and so many young people in our communities are falling into despair.
Labor's policies are pouring fuel onto the fire. They've locked in $180 billion in tax breaks for wealthy property investors, the biggest public subsidy for the ultrawealthy in Australia's history, and they've expanded the five per cent deposit scheme, which masquerades as first home buyer support but, in reality, pushes up house prices and plunges first home buyers into deep, deep debt.
Based on a current median dwelling price of $860,000, a standard mortgage rate and a five per cent deposit, first home buyers will pay an extra $140,000 in interest over the life of a loan if they sign up to Labor's five per cent scheme. The housing system in Australia is rigged against ordinary Australians, and this is not a mistake. It's working as designed.
Under Labor and the Liberals, housing has been turned into a casino. It's stacked in favour of wealthy multiple-property investors, big banks and big developers. Renters and first home buyers are being locked out while wealthy property investors and the banks are cashing in.
Thirty years ago, it took four years of average earnings to buy a home. Now it takes more than double that—more than eight years—and homeownership among people under 35 has collapsed. It's gone from half in the 1970s to just over a third today.
The consequences of these decisions push families into debt, force them to decide between three meals a day and making the rent, and cost people their lives. Homelessness has risen 10 per cent—10 per cent!—under Labor, and nine homeless people die from preventable causes every day, lacking a safe place to sleep. More and more of them are women trying to escape violence and finding themselves sleeping in doorways in cities—rich cities, like my own, Adelaide.
This is the worst housing crisis in living memory, and yet the government's answer is to do more of what caused it, to heat up demand. While renters are being bled dry, the big four banks are making record profits. They made $44.6 billion last year, and nearly $18 billion of that came straight from households paying off their homes.
Think about that. Banks made over $9,000 in profit in the first year of a typical mortgage. That's $761 every month, or $176 a week, in pure profit off the back of hardworking Australian homeowners.
Of the five most profitable corporations in Australia, the big banks are four of them. The total value of these four corporations alone is equal to roughly 38 per cent of our GDP. No wonder the banks are smiling.
They're making out like bandits while profiting off families drowning in debt. And Labor? They're not just letting it happen; they're aiding the profiteering of banks by introducing policies that further drive up house prices.
It leaves no question in my mind—Labor is working for big banks and developers and not for those first home buyers, spending billions on property investors instead of housing people, protecting profits and subsidising landlords instead of building the public homes that we all know and that history tells us we can build and will make the difference. Because of their decisions, house prices are now rising at their fastest rate in four years.
I feel sorry for those young people who open the newspaper every morning or listen to the radio and hear this appalling data. Housing is not a privilege. It's not an investment class; it's a home.
Everyone deserves one. The time for those incremental tweaks has passed. They make things worse.
What we need is a roof over everyone's head. We need help for those renters, and we need to make sure that the thousands of people sleeping rough in so many of our towns and communities can find a housing solution.