QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Dr CHALMERS (Rankin—Treasurer) (14:53): Thanks very much to the honourable member for his question about housing. A couple of important points to make. Whether it's house prices, auction clearance rates, rents or other indicators in the housing market—we'll get lending data later in the week as well—it's important to remember, as the Reserve Bank pointed out today and others have pointed out in their contributions, that there are a number of factors playing out in the housing market, whether it be interest rate movements earlier in the year or whether it be extreme global economic uncertainty.

There are a number of factors playing out in the housing market, and that's why we saw some softening in the housing market before the budget that we handed down in May. That's the first point. The second point is, when it comes to the changes that we made in the budget around housing, for the reasons that the Prime Minister ran through—to make sure that we can give first home buyers a fair crack in a housing market which has locked them out for too long—it's really important to remember that the Treasury assumptions in the budget about the impact on the housing market are assumptions over the next couple of years and not just over the first couple of months.

We have had, for some time now, upward pressure on rents. For some time now, partly because of a decade of neglect, we haven't had enough homes in our community, and we are taking the necessary steps. We are taking the necessary steps to build more homes, because we know that is the best way, over time, to put downward pressure on rents.

Now, when it comes to migration, I understand that those opposite want to go about this in the most divisive way that they can, but they need to recognise that net overseas migration has come down 45 per cent since its peak. When we came to office it was absolutely rocketing, and we have taken steps to moderate that net overseas migration number, at the same time as we're investing almost $50 billion in the main issue in housing, which is housing supply.

So, whether it's approvals, the investment numbers or the commencement numbers, they were going backwards when we came to office. We've been turning that around. It will take time to see the better housing market that we want to see, whether it's in rents, whether it's the impact on house prices over the medium term, or whether it's the share of first home buyers in the market.

There is a lot of volatility there. A lot of that volatility existed before the budget, and we measure the impact of our policies over a period of the next few years and not just the first few months.