CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Mr HOLZBERGER (Forde) (10:04): Sometimes it's a little bit daunting following the member for Bruce, but the good thing about speaking in this chamber and the video feed is that I can cut this up to make it sound like I came up with the idea! But I thought he summed it up perfectly when he talked about whether house prices are going to go up or down and what the government's intention is, and our intention is that wages will grow faster than house prices.
It's pretty simple. When you look at what has happened over the last 20 years, there was not only a deliberate policy to keep wages down but also an accidental policy, I guess, which forced house prices up. We've seen house prices go from multiples of four or five of the median wage to about 10 times the median wage.
It has become totally unsustainable and totally unaffordable. It really has killed the Australian dream. I think what the last couple of weeks has really revealed in this place is the battlelines of the next election.
When people realise that the investments that they have now have been grandfathered and the gains that they've made until now are going to be protected under the old rules, when they realise that, actually, the sky hasn't fallen down and that it's just a sensible recalibration of our tax policies to encourage people to buy a family home because it's a family home and not an investment people, the next election is going to be about that we are a party that believes in people buying a family home and in tax breaks for workers, and they're going to take a manifesto to the next election where they're going to give tax breaks to property investors.
I'm not sure they've really thought this one ahead. That's, of course, unless they change leaders again. Then, I guess, everything is off the table, and there's got to be a high chance of that.
At the moment, we have really seen what the battleground of the next election is going to be. The other thing that the last couple of weeks have really revealed is the philosophy of this government. I think the way the Prime Minister summed it up has two key things.
One is that nobody is left behind, and nobody is held back. The other thing that he said that really struck home to me—he of course said it more eloquently than I'm going to be able to say it—was, 'When you come across a problem, do you just sort of throw your hands up in the air and say, "I wish I could do something about it, but I'm the only Prime Minister?"' because I think what the last couple of weeks has revealed is that we are the party that is not going to cop the status quo anymore.
The people on the other side are the party who are defending the status quo. Somehow, they've got themselves into a position where they think that our settings around housing are good, our settings around health care are good, and our settings around industry support are good. Somehow, I think they've got themselves into this awful situation.
No wonder they're doing so badly.