DOCUMENTS

Senator BRAGG (New South Wales) (09:07): I move: That the Senate take note of the explanation. Very sadly we see, on this last day of this session, another day when the government is unprepared, and I move to take note of the minister's non-explanation of why the government has failed to provide documents again. The reason that the Senate has ordered the production of these documents and insists on their production is because they are of great public interest.

The government has spent millions of dollars on this five per cent deposit scheme. It has spent tens of millions of dollars advertising it across the country in very many different languages. More than 100,000 people have used it in the last year, many of whom will now be in negative equity as a result of the government deciding to encourage people to take 95 per cent mortgages out and then smashing them with new taxes, which pushes the value of their houses down and puts them into negative equity.

That's how much this government cares about the Australian people. The reason that we are determined to use the powers of this chamber in this democracy is that these documents belong to the Australian people and they deserve to see what they say. They deserve to be presented with them.

This is the question at hand: how many people are actually in negative equity today? Let's not forget that, in October last year, the government abolished the means testing and said, 'We're happy to give these deposits to people who are earning more than 600 grand.' Apparently, those people need free insurance from the government. They abolished the place caps because, of course, there's no limit on taxpayer funds; we can just shell it out like monopoly money.

Then, after they've shelled out all these 95 per cent mortgages, they came along and broke their promise and dumped $80 billion of new taxes onto the housing system. What that has done is push down the prices in hundreds of suburbs across the country. In Sydney and Melbourne, almost 500 suburbs alone have seen prices go down by more than five per cent since 1 October.

If you have a 95 per cent mortgage that you took out sometime between October last year and now and you live in one of those 500 suburbs in Melbourne or Sydney, you're in negative equity. The reason we're asking for this information about a suburb breakdown is that we want to know what exactly the government is doing to help these people that they have ensnared in this ridiculous scheme.

What we now see is the government refusing to provide information that it has. We asked for it back in June. They came back in July and wrote us a stupid letter saying: 'We're trying to scratch around in the Treasury.

We've got the pick and shovel out. We've got the excavator out down the back of Langton Crescent. We're trying to find the documents and the pieces of paper and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We haven't quite got there yet, but we'll try and come back next time.' We hear today from Minister Ayres in his non-explanation that the pick and shovel are still out and the excavation is still going on down at Langton Crescent. In fact, they've decided to enhance the landscape down there and they're going to tip the Treasury building into Lake Burley Griffin because they can't find the documents.

So they're going to try and float it away down to the other end of Canberra, down to the Molonglo. That's going to be their plan for giving us documents that they've lost, apparently. There you go.

The curious thing about all this is that on 1 October our good friend Mr Albanese and the housing minister put out a statement. They said they knew exactly how many people had taken out these guarantees in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, the ACT, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. They knew it exactly, down to the last number—102,594.

They knew which state and territory they lived in, so I would have thought that they'd also have the information about where they actually reside because that's how the scheme works. When Housing Australia gives out their guarantee, the person has to have a house. We know you have the information.

We know you treat this institution like garbage. We know that you think that the Australian people are idiots. We know that you think that your patronising approach in this chamber and your patronising approach on social media make you look good, but that doesn't actually solve any of the problems which the Australian people want you to work on.

The reason the Australian people are so agitated and angry is that they're tired of being treated like this. This is a basic request for information about how many people have these guarantees in which suburbs. You have the information.

You're pretending that you don't. We want the information. You're happy to make your stupid press statements, bragging about your terrible achievements, including how many people you're probably putting into negative equity.

Give us the documents. It is just not good enough for you to say you haven't got them. You know you've got them.

(Time expired)