COMMITTEES

Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (19:18): I too stand to make a contribution on the importance of why we need this reference to the economics committee relating to Housing Australia, and particularly the Housing Australia Future Fund that has in its control an incredible amount of taxpayer money. What is starting to become a bit of a trend in this place is that this government is very good at headline announcements.

We had a huge headline announcement about Housing Australia, about an $80 billion commitment towards housing in this country. Quite clearly, they had no plan behind it to actually work out how they were going to deliver it. Now, $80 billion is an awful lot of money.

And now we're seeing, through the organisations that have been set up—Housing Australia, the Housing Australia Future Fund and the like—the government try to retrofit into these organisations a promise that they made without having any real regard for how they were going to deliver it. Quite frankly, it astounds me that anybody in this Senate would not think it was a good idea to run a ruler over what's going on here with $80 billion.

It is our job to scrutinise the programs of this government, and yet time and time and time again we see this government refusing any scrutiny of any of its programs. One can only imagine that they have something to hide which is the reason why they're not letting us to get under the bonnet. But the thing that probably should be of more concern to Australians in relation to this program is the fact that it's not just the opposition and some others in this chamber who want to scrutinise this program.

The Australian National Audit Office is also seeking to monitor the reporting functions as part of the performance audit on the Housing Australia Future Fund. The Australian National Audit Office doesn't look at things for no reason at all, so the fact that the ANAO is keen to have a look at what's going on here should be ringing alarm bells for those who are listening.

There has been so much written about the fact that this government made an incredible number of promises, not the least of which was this one about something as important as housing. We know that there is a crisis in this country about housing affordability and about supply of housing, and we know that Australians are giving up hope of ever owning a house. That is an absolute tragedy for young Australians.

The media has been writing about this for quite some time, questioning the Housing Australia Future Fund program, which is run by Housing Australia—the subject of the request by Senator Bragg to have this referred to a committee for scrutiny—because every time we look at what they're doing we find they are completely missing any of their targets by such a lot.

A headline in the Financial Review only a few weeks back was 'Two years in, Housing Australia has completed 2pc of its total target'—two per cent in two years of a five-year program. I reckon anybody who has a basic maths understanding can work out that two per cent in two years means we have to provide 98 per cent in three years. One would suggest that that is not exactly delivering on its commitment.

How the government intends to do it one would like to actually know. Secondly, we were promised a new supply of housing, but we find out that, in the government's attempt to get some numbers on a piece of paper to say, 'We actually have delivered some houses in this program,' they've actually gone out and bought existing stock. That is not new houses.

That is not adding to housing supply. That is basically taking existing supply, fuelling demand in the market—houses that others could have bought. So we have a situation here where the government has made incredible promises about this program and everywhere, in every place you look at it, they are failing to do so.

Basically, what we find here is a failed program that is failing across the board, and Senator Bragg has sought to look under the bonnet of the program and review the future fund itself, the Affordable Housing Bond Aggregator, the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, the National Housing Accord Facility, the Home Guarantee Scheme, capacity building and the Help to Buy scheme.

I do not understand why the government are not seeking for us to be able to have a transparent look at it, because, if everything they're telling us about how everything's tickety-boo and there's nothing to worry about here were actually the case, you'd think they would be proud to have a review into it so we could see what's happening. Finally in my contribution, I will say that, as the shadow minister for aged care, I am incredibly concerned about the government's botched handling of aged care in this country—by every metric, aged care and support for older Australians who need aged care has gone backwards at an exponential rate since this government came to power—and the one thing that is really distressing is the fact that with, all this money being put into housing, accommodation for older Australians when they are in care has been completely left out of this.

It is almost as if this government thinks older Australians who need specialised accommodation because of the process of ageing don't matter. We would say to the government: if you really are serious about making sure that all Australians have access to housing, you would include residential aged care in your housing programs that you have going forward. But instead we see a crisis building in this country where last year fewer than 800 beds of the 10,000 that are required every year for 10 years were built.

That means older Australians are going without the care that they need because this government is neglecting something that is staring it in the face. We've got older Australians stuck in hospital. We've got older Australians on waitlists to get home-care packages.

We've got older Australians who can't get access to residential care, and this government doesn't even think it is worthwhile to include residential care in its housing programs. I say to the government you have got a lot to be worried about with regard to an inquiry, because quite clearly this issue, this particular program—this $80 billion worth of taxpayer funds—is not delivering on what it said it was going to deliver on.

Not only that but it highlights another failure in relation to aged care. There is an absolute disconnect between what's going on in the housing sector and what's going on in the aged care sector. This government has to learn that what one hand is doing the other one has to know about.

Otherwise, we're going to continuously see things fall between the gaps just as we've seen older Australians fall between the gaps. So I would say to the government if you've got nothing to hide why don't you support this inquiry so we can actually see what you're doing with $80 billion of Australians money?