E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP

BRISBANE
MONDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2016

SUBJECT/S: Housing affordability

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FINANCE: After more than three years of this Abbott-Turnbull Government, they’ve woken up this morning and, all of a sudden, discovered we’ve got a housing affordability crisis in this country. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull once famously said that the solution to the housing affordability crisis was to sort yourself out some rich parents. And now we have Scott Morrison giving a speech today, which is all about finger-pointing and blaming the states for the housing affordability crisis. When it comes to the Prime Minister, we have very low expectations that he would actually understand this problem. Mr Harbourside Mansion sees property buying as a hobby. He thinks a good idea for housing affordability is to downsize to Double Bay. So now we have the sum total of their approach to housing affordability: get rich parents and blame the states.

This is a Government which is entirely out of touch with the housing affordability crisis in our country and entirely out of ideas for ways to deal with it. If they had a clue about what's happening in these suburbs, they would understand that housing affordability is at crisis levels in this country and it will only properly be dealt with if we deal with negative gearing. 

Like a lot of things with this Government, the problems they have with housing affordability – with coming up with an adequate policy response – has a whole range of aspects. It is some parts hypocrisy, it is some parts incompetence, it is some parts disunity and it's a whole lot of failing to understand what life is really like for average Australians in the suburbs of this country. One of their first acts was to abolish the National Housing Supply Council in this country. Then you'll recall that Joe Hockey said that if you want to deal with the housing affordability crisis, all you needed to do was to get a better job and get some more money. Then Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison took to cabinet a proposal to deal with negative gearing and were rolled in a humiliating fashion. Then you had the Prime Minister say to deal with this, you just need rich parents. And now we have Scott Morrison saying it's all the states' fault.

We will not deal with the housing affordability crisis in this country until we deal with the unfairness in negative gearing. The current negative gearing arrangements favour property speculators at the expense of people trying to get a foothold in the housing market. Labor has a proposal and a policy to deal with negative gearing and the capital gains discount to level the playing field between those who have multiple properties and those who are trying to get into the housing market for the first time. If this Government wasn't so desperately and diabolically out of touch, they would pick up Labor's proposal for negative gearing and capital gains, so that we can begin to properly deal with the housing affordability crisis in our suburbs.

It is long past time after more than three years of lecturing Australians about getting richer parents, getting better jobs, blaming the states – it's long past time for this Turnbull Government to actually act on housing affordability. All of their utterances to date are woefully inadequate and woefully out of touch. Only Labor has a plan to deal with the housing affordability crisis and that begins with dealing with negative gearing.

JOURNALIST: I might just take it to a local level. There's been a report today saying that some of the outer suburbs of Brisbane are going to really boom over the next couple of years, but the inner-city areas will be quite affordable given we have an oversupply in the market. So is there really a problem there?

CHALMERS: Housing affordability is patchy right around the country and, as you rightly identify, we're seeing different trends in different parts of the country and different parts within our cities. In Logan City right now, and in the outer suburbs of Brisbane, the housing market is difficult as it is right around the country, but difficult for different reasons. What we want to see in this country is first-home buyers having a genuine opportunity to participate in the housing market; being able to benefit from the choice that is available in the market right now, whether it be the new apartments, whether it be the established suburbs, whether it be the new corridors being established outside our major cities. Every Australian should have the opportunity to participate in the housing market. We want to make it easier for them. The Turnbull Government wants to make it harder by clinging to the current unfair negative gearing arrangements. If the Government was serious about the housing affordability crisis, they would deal with negative gearing, so that no matter where you want to live in this country, whether it be in an apartment or an established house or a new home, you have the opportunity to do so. That's why we have the policy that we have.