Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (12:38): I move:
That this House:
(1) recognises the importance of home ownership to Australian families and that home ownership remains the Australian dream;
(2) notes:
(a) the increasing financial pressure on households with many Australians suffering mortgage stress; and
(b) research by Roy Morgan that an increased level of mortgage stress is being experienced across the country;
(3) acknowledges that the:
(a) high spending, high taxing policies of the Government has entrenched inflation and failed to support Australians struggling with high interest rates; and
(b) Government has failed to take the cost of living crisis seriously, with real disposable incomes collapsing by 7.5 per cent, per capita since the Government came to power, as a result of higher prices, higher taxes and higher interest rates; and
(4) calls on the Government to:
(a) admit that the Government’s policies are causing financial hardship for many Australians and fuelling the cost of living crisis; and
(b) immediately implement policies to address the high level of inflation and protect Australians from mortgage stress.
The great Australian dream of home ownership is not going away. It hasn’t left the recent generation. It’s such an important part of our national story, our national fabric. I think back to when I was a kid and our family history of how important the home was. My grandfather returned from the Second World War II too late to access a soldier settlement scheme. He’d been injured when a home-made still of his blew up in Papua New Guinea—a story that still raises a smile. When he came back, he missed that scheme, but, with his own hands, he built a jig to make bricks and started building a home, brick by brick, out in the scrub on the hill that looks over Warialda. He worked on it every week. It took him years to do it, but he was so proud because he finished that home the week before my mother was born. She was born in a home that he’d made, and he kept that home. They lived there for their whole lives. I was lucky enough, as a concreter in Ipswich—in Darra particularly—to watch Vietnamese Australians coming here and having their first homes built. We were building their driveways and their paths. People were proud to come to this great country and have a home of their own, something that was theirs and that was important. It was their statement to the world saying, ‘Here I am.’ That is not going away, as tough as times are. That is not an aspect that will die.
We want it to keep going. We want people to have a place of their own where not just the economy but the nation and our stories are continued. All the things that make us great happen in the home. They’re passed down through families. We want this, but it’s important we point out at this time, as have many in the media, that the government, via its fiscal policy and via the budget it has just released, is making it harder and harder for that next generation of Australians to realise that great dream of Australian homeownership. It’s not just me. We can look at economists across the spectrum who have pointed out the failings of this last budget. The CBA economics team said:
We had flagged that fiscal policy was one of the risks that could delay our base case that monetary policy easing would start in November this year.
They say:
The risk is now more real that the first interest rate cut could be delayed and that the neutral cash rate is higher than we currently estimate due to the expansionary fiscal setting and the high level of investment in the economy.
That’s because of this budget. KPMG has a similar line, having pointed out, ‘In the lead-up to the budget, there was a growing disconnect between monetary policy and fiscal policy, with one pressing on the brakes and the other pushing down on the accelerator.’ KPMG Chief Economist Brendan Rynne says, ‘The government has chosen to push its foot down even harder.’ He says:
A neutral, even slightly contractionary, budget would have been in order to help tackle inflation. But this is not a budget designed to consolidate the nation’s fiscal position and commence the task of gradually returning the budget to a sustainable position.
It’s not just these opinions; it’s outcomes. The cost of health has risen nine per cent since this government came to power. The cost of food has risen 10 per cent. The cost of education has risen 11 per cent across the board. The cost of housing has risen 12 per cent. The cost of public transport has risen 13 per cent. The costs are rising. The narrow path the RBA set for us now stretches out even further into the distance.
But there are things we can do to address this. There was a pathway that this government could have taken to reduce inflation. That would have been to pull back on its spending. When we raise these questions, we’re asked: ‘What would you cut? What terrible cuts would you make?’ I’ll start with the billion dollars for a quantum computer owned by an overseas company. I’ll start with billions of dollars of more subsidies into the renewable energy sector. Those are some simple cuts that we can make right off the top, but the point is—
Mr Perrett interjecting—
Mr HAMILTON: The member for Moreton will know this very well: Labor have deployed the bandaid of immigration to cover the fact that we are in a per capita recession. The only thing keeping us out of a recession is the streams of numbers who are being let in now via this open-door immigration policy, which is driving up housing demand and prices. If you’re a young kid out there looking to buy your own home, trying to save, trying to get on that property ladder and turning up to an open home and you’re thinking, ‘Wow; these lines are getting longer and longer,’ they are. It’s a direct policy of this government to paper over the cracks in its fiscal policy. They won’t do the hard work of reducing spending, but they will deploy the bandaid of higher immigration to keep them out of a recession. That is the only reason that they stick with this: to cover their tracks when they have failed to provide economic credibility.
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms McKenzie): Is the motion seconded?
Ms Ware: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.
