COMMITTEES

Senator BROCKMAN (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (19:26): I'll make a brief contribution. I'm conscious that we're running out of time. Like Senator Ruston, I wasn't planning to speak on this issue until I sat in the chamber and listened to the contributions.

I'm just going to talk about one very narrow aspect of this referral, which is the Home Guarantee Scheme. It very much has concerned me, since this idea was first put forward by the government, that the five per cent deposit puts young Australians at risk. Putting a five per cent deposit scheme—I was in a position, with my wife, to look at buying a place.

We were looking at a property where we would've needed some lenders mortgage insurance, and I remember very well it was a significant sum of money. It was about $7,000 to $8,000 at that point. It was a significant sum of money.

But what do young people who have gone into this scheme now and young people who are considering it have to consider? They have to consider how much the five per cent deposit scheme has brought people into the market and pushed up house prices. I've seen reports—and they're obviously without proper econometric modelling of the sort that an inquiry like this could start to undertake or at least have some expert witnesses to talk about—to say that the five per cent deposit scheme of this government has forced up house prices within the scheme by about $20,000.

Those young people who went into this scheme under promises from this government would rightly be asking themselves in the current economic environment where we have potential interest rate increases—well, one has happened recently, and there are multiple potential future increases in interest rates. We're also seeing a very uncertain economic time where there could be downward pressure on house prices.

You could see those young people being made worse off. They would've been better off in an environment where they had taken out lenders mortgage insurance rather than seeing the price of houses that they were in the market for accelerating at a rate faster than the general market because of the government's five per cent deposit scheme. Now those young people are vulnerable.

They are exposed. There is no doubt in the current economic climate that some of the people who undertook a mortgage of 95 per cent of the value of the property they have purchased are under a mortgage in a climate of high and rising interest rates. That could actually put those young families, those young people, into a situation of excessive mortgage stress.

How would the government respond to those young people? Quite frankly, one of the things I would like this inquiry to do is talk to some of those young people in that situation. Talk to some of the young people who have now found themselves in a situation where they have a mortgage that represents 95 per cent of the value of the property at that time, they have faced at least one—possibly two, possibly three—interest rate rises and they are facing a situation where that property is perhaps not worth as much as it— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Grogan ): Thank you, Senator Brockman.

We have reached the hard marker.