COMMITTEES

Senator BRAGG (New South Wales) (17:19): I will start by thanking colleagues who have already made statements this evening. From the government, I thank Senator Ananda-Rajah and Senator Darmanin. I've really enjoyed working with those senators, as well as with Senator McKenzie, on this committee.

We had a lot of fun at the public hearings, but I'll move on to the serious matter of the productivity challenge that the country has. We are living through a great decline in our nation, which is very regrettable, and our productivity trajectory is very poor. Yes, people can use speeches in this place to apportion blame to various people, but I think, in the main, it has been a bit of a bipartisan job.

In relation to housing productivity in particular, we have had a serious problem, in that the bureaucrats have been allowed to run on autopilot and ministers of the day, potentially of both shades of government, have just let things happen without properly considering them. The point of this interim report is to land a series of policy options on housing productivity.

There are matters of finance and banking. There are matters of how the regulators are set up. Then, of course, there is the matter of the National Construction Code, which is probably the biggest lever the national government has in terms of determining how productive or unproductive the housing system might be.

The National Construction Code is one of those things that every bloodsucker and every rent seeker has found a way to get their snout into. So what you've got is a National Construction Code which has ballooned from a couple of hundred pages 30 years ago to now 2,000 pages and it is effectively unreadable. As a failed accountant and a very poor auditor, I take the view that, if a professional in an industry can't understand their own governing rules or has no chance of ever actually being able to read them, it's not a very good sign.

I take the view that the 2,000 pages, which it has now ballooned to, are not a sign of health for the housing sector. Effectively, it is a punitive way to deal with people coming into the housing system. It says: 'You've got to have all this gold plating.' Everything has to be mandatory.

You must have a house built as if you are disabled or as if you are wanting to have the most super-duper energy-efficient house known to humanity. I think the general view is that the house should be— Senator Ayres: It's awkward until the cladding is on fire. Senator BRAGG: I'll take the interjection.

We want to have safe houses. It's very important that our houses are safe. It doesn't mean they need to be gold plated.

The core recommendation for establishing a basic Australian standard is that a house won't burn down and won't fall down, but it won't be gold plated. That allows people to enter the market without having to pay for the house as if they are disabled and without all the additional so-called cladding. That is a very good model, and that is going to be the core of the debate going forward.

Senator Ayres interjecting— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Neill ): Order, Senator Ayres. Senator BRAGG: Thank you for that protection. The government have failed to deliver any reasonable reform here in relation to the National Construction Code.

This is an opportunity now for the nation to have a proper debate: do we want to allow people to build a cheap house, or do we not want to allow people to build a cheap house if they want to? Last time I looked, we lived in a free country and a free society, where people should be able to build a cheap house which is safe and secure, if they want to. So that is one of the core recommendations of this review.

I note with great regret the ability of rent seekers and parasites to inject themselves into the public policy process. That is what has happened in relation to this construction code. All the vested interests have made it uneconomic to build.

One of the problems we have in this country is that it's very hard to make any money out of housing, so not many houses are being built. This is a way to lower the cost. If you want to have a super-duper energy-efficient house, then you can have that.

That's in the report. The second thing I'd say in relation to the massive problem of mortgage fraud is that we are now going to recommend that the consumer data right— Government senators interjecting— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Neill ): Senator Bragg, please resume your seat for a moment. On this occasion, I'm not asking you to withdraw, but I am asking senators to comply with the standing orders and allow Senator Bragg to continue his remarks.

Senator BRAGG: The second core point I wanted to make is around this consumer data right. I think it's been very clear that there is a lot of mortgage fraud going on in this country. It's fuelled by artificial intelligence.

There are a lot of pieces of paper that fly around when people try and get a loan. If anyone has recently refinanced or tried to get a home loan, they would have found that it's effectively a paper based system. Artificial intelligence now allows people to make duplicates or completely fraudulent documents, so I think that having the CDR hooked up to the tax office in some way for verification is well worth looking at.

The other point we looked at in this productivity inquiry was the mandate of APRA, which I think is very focused, as it should be, on prudential safety. But it also makes sense for them to consider the impact of their macroprudential tools on the ability of people to get finance so they can get that elusive first home. We didn't make any commentary on their judgements in relation to macroprudential tools, but we did make the point that they should at least make them disallowable in such a way that the Senate could actually take one out if it thought it was unreasonable.

And I make that point in relation to their limits on high debt-to-interest loans and also in relation to the serviceability buffer. The report does deal with the productivity problem that the EPBC Act has created. Despite the government's best efforts, there are still 80,000 houses ensnared inside the EPBC Act.

The fact that the minister of the day doesn't publish the decisions and the judgements that he makes about the approvals or the denials is a problem, because the people who are wanting to build houses have nothing to work with. There is no precedent, if that makes sense, so publishing what is effectively going to be a compliant development under the EPBC Act would, I think, aid people wanting to build houses in this country.

In the main, I think we had a very collegiate opportunity to identify some productivity problems in the housing system. We may not agree on everything, but in general I would say that more rules and more regulations have not made more houses, and as we face a significant housing deficit, I think we ought to look at the regulatory burden of the NCC. I note from the multiple interjections that there is perhaps a strong disagreement about where the final balance should lie, but I would have thought that we should try and give people the choice to build a cheap house, if that is their wish.

We should also give people the choice to build additional properties and dwellings on their properties, whether they be above or whether they be granny flats or whether they be subdivisions. Ultimately, we want to have more buildings to house our population. We want to maintain our ethos as a great migrant nation, but we also want to be able to house new Australians.

So I think this is a— Senator Ayres interjecting— Senator BRAGG: I'm very happy to go into that. I do think that the serviceability buffer has probably been set too high, but that is not something that we as parliamentarians make a judgement on, as you know. In general, I do think that this suite of options gives the government some serious policy work that it needs, because the nation has a fundamental problem.

I've tried not to be too political in this contribution, but the government is stuck on autopilot in its housing policies. What it needs is a refresh, because what it's been doing for four years hasn't worked. I'll say as kindly as I can that the high-tax, high-regulation, high-corruption model has failed to give the houses that Australians need.

Most of the government's interventions have ended up making the problem worse, not better. This is a report which gives them options on productivity in terms of the banking and finance component and in terms of the regulation component. There are many other things in there, but I would have thought that even my favourite environment minister, Minister Watt, could agree to the very kind recommendation we offered, which is that he should publish his judgements about the nature of compliant development so that people in future can see that that complies and that this doesn't comply.

Hopefully, they'll then be able to provide more of the housing stock that Australians sorely need. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned.