QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator AYRES (New South Wales—Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) (14:22): Well, it is hard to hear that question and really think that there is a measured approach on these housing questions coming from the Greens political party. Under this government, the number of Australians, mostly young Australians, who have taken advantage of that scheme is at 270,000.

That is more than a quarter of a million Australians who now have a home because of that scheme, and the kind of hyperbolic rhetoric president that the senator asking the question engaged in just doesn't accept that fact that over a quarter of a million Australians, through just that component of our approach to housing— The PRESIDENT: Senator Pocock? Senator Barbara Pocock: Minister Ayres has not addressed the issue of investment properties being purchased through this faulty scheme.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Pocock, I'm not quite sure why you stood or if it's a point of order, which is what you need to inform me when you stand. I am listening carefully. If the minister strays from the question, I will draw him back, but he is being relevant.

Senator AYRES: The senator says that, out of the more than a quarter of a million Australians who have access to homes through this scheme, 1,500 or so have sold them. Well, people do sell homes sometimes as well as buy them. It's hard to buy homes if people aren't selling homes.

Honestly: Two years ago, Nicole Pengilly's hope of buying a home in Brisbane receded with every inspection she attended. "You could see the house prices going up as I was looking," she said. "The amount I could borrow hadn't changed, so it just felt like it was slipping away." She said, because of this scheme: I'm just so excited to get into a place that I own, and I can just settle and stay and not have that fear looming over me … Look her in the eyes and use that same hyperbolic political nonsense— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT: Senator Pocock, first supplementary?