QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator COLLINS (New South Wales—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (15:12): We've just heard from the government that they want to stabilise. We heard from our Foreign minister today in this chamber that all these changes to the housing market are about redistribution. I have never heard anything so socialist in all my life—redistribution, by this Labor government, of the housing market, of the wealth generated in this society.
Senator Ghosh was just talking about not having feelings hurt for the investors. Let me tell you about the households that are feeling it right now. We asked the government about whether they are across the reality of their tax changes—a trifecta of fewer homes, higher rents and falling buyer confidence.
They've absolutely got their heads in the sand over the reality of that. They think our assumptions are wrong. All you have to do is step out of Parliament House and go and see how people are hurting out there.
It's not their feelings that are hurt; it's their pockets, wealth, aspirations and dreams. This government's taken all that away from them. Let's talk about a little bit of history from the 1990s and the Hawke-Keating government, when they had their head in the sand.
They had a very deliberate policy to slow down the economy, and that went very, very badly indeed. It turned into a severe economic downturn, with unemployment of 11 per cent. But they weren't across that reality.
They didn't step outside this parliament house, the Canberra bubble, and go and see how people are really feeling out there. They focused on structural change but not the brutal reality of their bad policy. But we know that, out there right now, there are no new loans for houses, confidence is down, no sales across weekends, no new builds, higher rents, higher prices and higher migration.
It is the absolute perfect economic storm—redistribution. Of course, it gets worse than that. My colleague, Senator Blyth, asked some excellent questions about falling productivity.
We asked whether Labor, since they came to office, could name one year in which productivity growth reached the long-run average necessary to sustainably increase living standards. Of course, it would be a very easy answer if there were a year they could name, but they couldn't. Instead, they talked about our voting record.
That's very telling, isn't it. After four years, we asked: 'Where's the plan to raise productivity?' They don't really have one. All they can do is talk about our voting record.
In fact, what we did hear from the leader of the Senate was, 'Put up, or shut up,' on the very serious issue of productivity. I don't see, in any world, where it is okay to tell an active opposition to a government to, 'Put up, or shut up,' with bad policy like that. It is very telling.
They say we're anti housing, when here we are trying to hold them to account for their complete destruction of the housing market. We heard from the Reserve Bank how bad it's getting out there: Relative to the May forecast, a stronger population growth assumption has led to slightly higher GDP growth over most of the forecast period… It means that they're using population to cover up their bad productivity.
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