PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr KENNEDY (Cook) (12:27): Australia is in the middle of a housing crisis. Rents are too high, mortgages are too high and construction costs are too high. Meanwhile, young Australians are being told, 'Work hard, save and be patient.' The dream of homeownership moves further and further away from them.

At the very moment that Australia needs more housing, this government is pursuing policies that will result in fewer homes—and we know from this government's budget papers precisely how many fewer homes: Treasury has estimated 35,000 fewer homes. And while this government is building fewer homes, it's letting our population policy grow uncontrolled. We have had almost 1½ million new arrivals into Australia, at a time when we have an undersupply of homes.

It's no surprise that, when you have an undersupply of homes and an oversupply of people who need to be housed in homes, prices and unaffordability go up. We should be doing everything possible to get more homes built. We should be backing tradies, builders, investors, first home buyers and families.

We should be removing barriers, not adding new ones. We should be encouraging supply, not punishing people who invest in it. But this government's been doing the opposite.

We know they promised 1.2 million new homes. That was the target, that was the commitment. But this government is already well behind, with independent forecasts showing that Australia is going to miss that target by well over 200,000 houses.

That's not a rounding error. That's hundreds of thousands of Australians for whom there should be homes that they can bid on, that they can live, but that do not exist. Now, on top of this failure, the government wants to make the problem worse.

At a time when Australians desperately need more housing supply, we're going to have 35,000 fewer homes. That means fewer opportunities for first home buyers, tighter rental markets, higher rents, more competition for every available property and more pressure on families already struggling to keep up. It also means another generation being asked to pay the price for bad government policy.

I recently had an 18-year-old constituent write to me and say: As one of four children, I worry about what the future will look like for my generation. We're growing up in a time when housing feels increasingly out of reach, the cost of living continues to rise, and financial security seems harder to achieve than it was for previous generations. Our parents have worked hard, made sacrifices, and gone without many things so they could save, invest, and create opportunities for our future.

It is disheartening to see the rules continually change after families have spent years making responsible decisions based on the policies that were in place. We are often told that if we work hard, save our money, and plan for the future, we will be rewarded. However, when the taxes and regulations continue to change, it feels like the goalposts keep moving.

I couldn't have put it better myself. This is about goalposts being moved on Australians who did the right thing and trusted this government. It's about parents who worked hard, saved carefully and invested responsibly only to be told by this government that they are now the problem.

It's about young Australians who are trying to build their own future and save for a deposit, but even the deposit for their house has gone up. The tax on that has gone up by up to 100 per cent. It's about young Australians who are trying to build their own future but keep watching the government make that future harder to reach.

It's about aspiration, and aspiration isn't something we should punish; it's something we should encourage and reward. Labor looks at investment and sees a tax target. Labor looks at aspiration and sees something to regulate.

Labor looks at a housing crisis and somehow decides the answer is higher taxes and less supply. Housing is already weighed down by taxes, fees, charges, approvals, delays and regulation. One study found the cost of housing in Sydney is up to 50 per cent government and taxes.

So why are we taxing it more? Why are we regulating it harder? Government is already taking too much, slowing down too much and making it harder and more expensive to build.

Yet Labor's answer is more tax, more intervention, more uncertainty and less housing. This isn't housing policy; it's economic vandalism. A serious government would focus on supply, get immigration where it needs to be and put Australians first.

Sadly, this government's not doing that. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Wilkie ): The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.