ADJOURNMENT

Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (19:50): For young Australians trying to save a deposit, the numbers are moving faster than they can. Under four years of the Albanese government, rents have surged 39 per cent, leaving Australians paying around $200 more every week than in 2021. That is more than $10,000 a year disappearing before they have even started saving for a home.

Australians are not just struggling to buy—few are even trying. Since the budget, new home loan applications have plunged 20 per cent at Westpac, 15 per cent at CBA and 12 per cent at ANZ, excluding government assistance programs. Think about what that says.

People are looking at the repayments, looking at the deposit, looking at the cost of living and deciding they simply can't do it. At the same time, the homes they need are not being built. A record 1,500-plus New South Wales construction firms went under last financial year—in the middle of a housing crisis.

Since Labor's housing accord began in 2024, an extraordinary 7,700-plus developers have called it quits, and the Housing Industry Association says just two per cent of New South Wales projects undergoing feasibility studies for finance are even getting the green light. Two per cent—that should set alarm bells ringing, here in this place and right across Canberra, because you cannot solve a housing shortage while making homes harder and more expensive to build.

Demand is being squeezed, supply is being strangled and those Australians who've already managed to buy are being hit from the other direction. Mortgage stress has hit an 18-year high. Roy Morgan Research shows that over 32 per cent of mortgage holders were 'at risk' of mortgage stress in July.

That's nearly 1.8 million Australians living on a financial knife's edge—180,000 more in just one month. That's nearly 200,000 more people on a knife's edge in just one month. And 1.21 million Australians are now 'extremely at risk'.

Even if they stop paying down their loan and only cover the interest, it will still take too big a bite out of their household budget. These are families checking the bank account before they fill the trolley. They are not getting ahead—they are barely holding on.

Another quarter-point rate rise would add around $92 a month to repayments on a $600,000 mortgage. Two rises before Christmas would add another $183 a month. And, while mortgage repayments rise, home values fall.

In Sydney, nearly $87,000 has been wiped from the value of the average house since November. Australians are being squeezed from both sides—more to service the mortgage and less value in the home. For recent first home buyers, there's nowhere near enough equity to absorb much more pain.

Around 48,000 homes have been bought through the Albanese government's expanded five per cent deposit scheme since October last year, yet almost half of those buyers now have no more equity than the deposit they started with. Only 52 per cent have built equity above that original five per cent deposit. These are Australians who scraped and saved just to get their foot in the door.

Now falling prices are eating into the tiny buffer they worked so hard to build. They finally got their foot in the door, and now they're watching the floor fall away beneath them. Treasurer Jim Chalmers keeps asking Australians to believe this story somehow ends well.

Even the Australian has told him to 'get his house plunge facts straight', because Australians aren't living in some Treasury forecast two years from now; they're living now. This is their reality—in the rent due this week, the mortgage repayments due next month, the deposit that keeps moving further away and the building projects that never gets off the ground.

We are watching it grow bigger. It is bigger than a bad set of housing numbers. We are watching aspiration being ground down in real time.

It is a generation working harder, paying more and owning less, saving longer, borrowing more and getting less in return. That should alarm every member in this parliament. Australia needs a government that believes in their dreams as much as they do.

Families should not fear losing the home they have worked years to buy, and the great Australian dream is so worth fighting for.