ADJOURNMENT

Senator McDONALD (Queensland—Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (19:53): Of all the Prime Minister's broken promises, the changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax rank amongst the most damaging. We don't have enough homes. Rents are too high.

Young Australians are struggling to buy. Regional businesses cannot find accommodation for the workers they need, and northern Australia is not immune from the government's attacks. We desperately need confidence and investment in new housing.

The Albanese government has delivered another shock to the market. Its changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax have landed at the same time as higher interest rates and already extraordinary construction costs. Now we know the Treasurer was warned about the consequences.

At the same time the Prime Minister says we desperately need more housing, confidential Treasury advice released under freedom of information says the government's tax changes will put downward pressure on house prices, upward pressure on rents and reduce housing supply. This is extraordinary. We are now seeing the first steps of the national housing downturn reaching regional Queensland.

Townsville's home prices fell in July for the first time since March 2023. Cairns recorded its first monthly fall in more than six years. Now, that may sound like good news for somebody trying to buy a house, but it does nothing to address housing supply or rising rents.

A slightly cheaper house isn't much consolation to a young family who can't find a rental while they save their deposit. The Housing Industry Association reported last week that new home sales nationally have fallen for three consecutive months. HIA says lending to investors fell almost 20 per cent in the first half of this year and now warns this is filtering into the new construction pipeline.

This is precisely what northern and regional Australia cannot afford. HIA says Cairns needs another 1,550 new homes every year to meet its share of the National Housing Accord target. Last financial year, it approved fewer than 700.

There were just 1,512 new residential lots registered, down almost 28 per cent on the previous year. Vacant land sales fell 42 per cent. At the same time, the median price of residential land reached a record $363,750.

That's up 41 per cent in just 12 months. In Townsville, the local council approved a record 1,255 residential lots last financial year, which is welcome, but merely approving a block of land is very different to putting a family into a finished home. Property consultants Rider Levett Bucknall expect construction tender prices in Townsville to rise seven per cent this year—the highest increase of any Australian market it examined—and around 30 per cent cumulatively by 2029.

In Darwin, housing rents are now approaching $800 a week, having risen almost 20 per cent in a year. That market needs more investment in housing, but now developers are wondering if putting their money into housing is worth the risk. There is another extraordinary admission in Treasury's advice.

Its modelling did not separately identify the impacts of these changes between different geographic regions. So, when we ask what Labor's policy will mean for northern Australia, the answer is they don't know because they didn't care to look or understand. The coalition will end Labor's heartless attacks on people trying to invest to provide for themselves and their children.

We will axe Labor's changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax and restore confidence for Australians who want to save, invest and provide rental housing. We will establish a $5 billion housing infrastructure fund to unlock up to 400,000 new homes by helping to fund the basic infrastructure that turns land into housing. Importantly, we have guaranteed that at least $1.5 billion of that fund will be invested in regional, rural and remote Australia.

We'll simplify the National Construction Code while retaining core safety standards to reduce the cost of building a new home by up to $70,000. We will link migration to housing supply. This is part of the coalition's plan to fix the economy and protect our way of life—lower taxes, cheaper power, less migration, more homes and putting Australians first because Australia is worth fighting for.