address to parliament - BILLS - Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 - Consideration of Senate Message

Here we go! Members opposite will be interested to know I just googled 'lovers getting back together in songs'. They're 'Whatever it Takes' by Lifehouse, 'Reunited' by Peaches and Herb—I like this one—'Let's Stay Together' by Al Green, but the best one of all is Katy Perry's 'Never Really Over' because it never was really over. The relationship between the Greens and Labor was always there and was always strong. They were just pretending they had a little lovers' tiff, and we know that, on housing, the Greens pretended they were going out on a limb. They have rolled over, the government has capitulated and it is embarrassing for all concerned.

We as a coalition are not going to support these amendments to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023. The former minister for housing in the coalition government, who sits behind me here, the member for Deakin, put in place three very responsible measures, three programs which assisted 300,000 people to get homeownership. They are the Home Guarantee Scheme, HomeBuilder and the First Home Super Saver Scheme. Those policies were effective. They worked. What we have now is the Greens, who have never been in favour of building anything, and Labor, who puts in place reviews of everything that ever was going to be built, coming together to put a scheme in place that is not going to build a single house. It's just not going to. When Labor took government I heard promises of a million houses. Now it's 30,000. What is it going to be? Is it going to be a house? Is it going to be 30,000 houses? Is going to be a million homes?

What I'd really like to know is: what are you going to build those houses with? We've got a Labor Victorian government. They're totally against any timber being extracted or used. They want to turn off all the gas. The Greens are with them. They don't want any fossil fuels used. Are they going to be straw houses, so, when the wolf comes, he's can huff and puff and blow them down? These are questions that need to be answered, because those opposite don't want to build anything. They want to review absolutely everything.

The other thing too—and this is pertinent—is that, as of late June 2023, ASIC data shows 2,023 construction companies have gone into liquidation since mid-2021. This figure dwarfs the next industry sector, the accommodation and food sector, with 1,013 companies, and makes up the lion's share of 7,231 companies in total that have folded over the same period. You've got housing and construction companies throughout Australia shutting up shop. They can't find labour. They cannot find the materials to build houses.

Honourable members interjecting—

Mr McCORMACK: You can yell at me all you like, but it's the truth, and it's particularly the truth in regional Australia. It comes down to local government planning. It comes down to the sheer ineptitude of state governments that want to close down the timber industry, and then it comes down to the federal Labor government, which doesn't want to build anything, unless it's with the Greens. Then they make this faux policy that they claim is going to build tens of thousands of houses. Good luck with that! It's just not going to work.

If you look at the housing construction companies that have gone to the wall, some are not small companies.

Honourable members interje cting—

Mr McCORMACK: You shouldn't laugh at this, because this is very, very serious, because it's people in jobs. It's tradies. It's those people who you claim to be supporting through fee-free TAFE. I said the other day that sparkies and plasterers and all of those people who go to TAFE and earn that certificate should be admired and applauded every bit as much as anybody who holds a tertiary degree from university. They should, and yet they are being put up against the proverbial brick wall by those opposite with their policies, with their embarrassing coercion by the Greens, who pretended for months they were going to pull the trigger for the double dissolution. Now what have we got? We've got these amendments which the coalition will not and cannot support. You all ought to go and take a good long, hard look at yourselves, particularly the minister.

Mikelli Garratt