Address to the Committee for Sydney - 'Sydney Summit 2025'

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All Talk no Action

The most urgent challenge Sydney faces is solving the housing crisis.

Sydney is a vibrant, global city—arguably the best in the world. Not only is it one of the most picturesque cities, but it is also home to some of the brightest and most innovative minds.

Sydneysiders are the heart of Sydney.

Failure to address the housing crisis risks destroying this very heart.

Young Sydneysiders increasingly feel as though they will never own a home in the city they love.

We are already witnessing the consequences of this failure. Young Sydneysiders are abandoning Australia altogether, moving overseas in search of cities where they can afford to live and achieve home ownership.

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They are no longer moving interstate, because across the country, prospective first home owners are being locked out of the market.

Labor, both State and Federal, have talked a very big game when it comes to solving the wicked housing crisis. But for all that talk, the results have been miserable.

Over the last three years, federal Labor has pushed home ownership further away from younger Australians.

They have done three things:
1. Built bureaucracies rather than houses
2. Enriched their favourite vested interests in Big Super funds and unions
3. Deployed policies which middle Australia cannot access

Labor will never fix housing because they are welded to vested interests, bureaucracy and bad ideas.

Labor’s record

The reality is that we need to build more houses, and Labor has failed to do that.

New Parliamentary Library research shows that during the nine years of Coalition government over 192,500 new dwellings were completed annually. Since Labor came to power, the number of new dwelling completions has plummeted to 174,000 annually.

Labor can’t say it’s mission accomplished - they’ve made the problem worse.

During this time, Labor has brought in over 1,000,000 new migrants without considering the impact this would have on the housing market.

Labor has deflected this point, claiming that this increase in migration resulted from closed borders during the pandemic.

But to comprehend Labor’s inability to build the dwellings we need, you only need to look at the rate of construction before the pandemic compared with today.
Back in 2018, over 210,000 new dwellings were being built in that year alone. For Labor to return to these numbers, they would need to increase construction by at least 20 per cent.
In order for Labor to meet their own housing targets of 1.2 million new homes over five years, Australia would need to build 240,000 new dwellings every year.
New South Wales Labor Premier, Chris Minns, concedes it would be extremely difficult to meet these targets. Labor is making promises they know they can’t deliver.
Our plan to temporarily reduce net migration, and restrict foreign ownership of existing builds, will give our construction industry the time it needs to rebuild.

The Master Builders Association highlights how 2024 was the worst year for new home builds in a decade. Labor is doing nothing to address rising material costs and labour shortages, which are crippling private developers.

The Australian Dream cannot be achieved without the construction industry. But under the Albanese Labor Government private developers have been put out to pasture, whilst militant unions needlessly exacerbate an already inflationary housing market.

Since Labor came to power, the construction industry has consistently led the nation in the rate of insolvencies. ASIC data shows that last financial year, 27.5% of all insolvencies were in the construction sector.

There is no chance we can move the dial on housing, without private developers to build the houses.

That’s why the Coalition wants to make it easier to build the dwellings needed, and why we have announced a 10 year freeze to the National Construction Code (NCC).

Currently, the NCC is updated every three years, with each update changing what materials and methods can be used in construction.

Each update to the NCC increases the cost of construction, with that cost being passed  onto consumers. Freezing the NCC for 10 years isn’t an anti environmental measure, it's a pro supply measure to make construction in Australia tenable again.

Addressing supply also involves removing the burdens that are holding back the development of more homes.

To address this the Coalition has committed $5bn for the last mile infrastructure needed before housing developments can commence.

Private developers wanting to bring increased supply onto the market are being blocked because of missing sewerage, water, road and power connections.

Here in Sydney, you would be hard pressed to find a developer with kind words about Sydney Water.

The failure of state and federal Labor to get water and sewerage to new houses is perhaps the biggest recent failure of all.

That's why our housing infrastructure plan has been designed to step into the breach and provide a solution which will deliver 500,000 new homes.
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Pt 1 - Labor’s Building Bureaucracies not Houses

Labor has failed at this monumental challenge, because they have spent their time in office more concerned with building bureaucracies, rather than building houses.

What I mean by this, is that instead of getting shovels in the ground, Labor has been giving money to bureaucratic agencies and passing this off as housing measures.

They’re not.

Labor has committed over $10 billion to social and affordable housing through the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF). Yet, not a single home has been delivered under this scheme.

Last September, Labor’s Housing Minister, Clare O’Neil released a statement with the Prime Minister claiming that 13,742 new homes had been approved under the HAFF.

Last November, during Senate Estimates, I probed the head of Housing Australia on the progress of this announcement:

Senator Bragg: So, of the 13,000 houses that were promised in this statement back in September by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Housing, you are saying that you have signed one contract in relation to that?

Mr Langford: That is correct.

Last week, Housing Australia announced that 12 contracts had been signed for 810 new dwellings.

That’s 12,932 less than what Labor promised just five months ago.

It is mindboggling that the Prime Minister would announce these new houses back in September before contracts were signed, let alone shovels entering the ground.

Labor’s big on announcements but bad at building.

Labor is in government - they control the public service. If they believed that housing is such a big issue, they would direct the public service to deliver all the homes promised.

To date this has not happened.

This again highlights the craziness of expecting bureaucracy to deliver houses.

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Pt 2 - Preoccupied with Vested Interests

Since coming to power, Labor has pursued what can only be described as a corporate housing agenda—one that prioritises institutions over individuals.

Under Labor’s HAFF, Big Super funds and foreign fund managers are being incentivised to build and own housing stock across the country.

Labor is actively incentivising corporate home ownership, encouraging Big Super to use your money to buy up homes and rent them back to you.

Meanwhile Labor remains religiously opposed to Australians using their own superannuation to enter the housing market.

This is not about helping first home buyers. It is about locking everyday Australians out of the market while handing over the housing market to Labor’s favourite vested interests.

Super for Housing

A vote for the Coalition is a vote to let Australians use their own superannuation to build a deposit for a first home.

Under our proposal, first home buyers could withdraw up to $50,000 from their super fund to help them get onto the property ladder sooner.

Labor, inexplicably, supports super funds investing in residential property but refuses to let Australians do the same with their own savings.

The so-called “Super Members’ Council” (SMC), funded by Big Super, is coordinating a scare campaign against super for housing, claiming it would push prices through the roof.

The Big Super lobby paid economist Saul Eslake to do a report for them. Unsurprisingly Mr Eslake found super for housing was bad.

The SMC refused to disclose how much of members' money was spent on this report.

When the SMC appeared before the Senate Retirement Inquiry, I asked the SMC how much Mr Eslake was paid for his report. They said:

“All of our supplier arrangements are commercial-in-confidence.”

Following this answer, I issued a Question on Notice to the SMC asking the same question. They refused to answer my question. Likewise, Eslake himself.

This is nothing more than a scare campaign funded by people’s super. We just don’t know how much they are wasting.

Independent economists who have examined super for housing, have found it would have an immaterial impact on house prices.

Economist Cameron Murray says of the impact on house prices:
“So I think the price effect is probably small, and definitely temporary … in the debate we don’t get that subtlety.”

The Grattan Institute said Big Super is overstating the effect:
“…we’re talking about a $10 trillion housing market and the additional money made available out of super… is going to be a small share of that in additional demand.”

Former Reserve Bank and now CIS economist Peter Tulip also said Big Super is exaggerating:
“That seems way too high to me … it seems implausible that it would be anywhere near that big … We have had experience of financial assistance to first-home buyers … it hasn’t had a very big effect on overall house prices.”

This policy is about supporting first home buyers to overcome the deposit hurdle - particularly Australians without access to the bank of mum and dad.

Super is well placed to support the Australian Dream.

Modelling by actuaries Michael Rice and Jonathan Ng found Australians using their super to support the deposit on an entry level Sydney unit would be $881,000 better off in retirement.

You’re better off with a house over the long term.

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Pt 3 - Failed ideas  

Failing Prospective First Home Owners

Not only has the Albanese Government failed to lay the groundwork on the supply side but they have also failed on the demand side.

Action is needed on the demand side specifically to help prospective first home owners enter and stay in the housing market.

We cannot save the Australian Dream, unless we even the playing field for prospective first home owners.

A comparison of Corelogic’s data on the time it takes prospective first home owners to save for a first home deposit shows an increase in almost every capital city.

Here in Sydney, there has been an over 11 month increase since the election, with Sydneysiders now saving for 12.5 years for their first home deposit.

Nationally, there has been a 14 month increase with it now taking 9.4 years to save for a first home deposit.

First home buyers in Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart will all need two more years than in 2022 to save their first deposit.

And under Labor’s watch.

No wonder prospective first home buyers feel abandoned by this Labor government.

We are going backwards.

Help to Buy isn’t Helping

The Government believes that their woeful ‘Help to Buy’ can help bridge the deposit cliff.

‘Help to Buy’ is woeful because it fails at the first hurdle. The caps set under the scheme render it useless for most properties in Australia’s capital cities.

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State based co-ownership schemes have seen low take up, because inherently, Australians don’t want to co-own their home with the government.

The NSW Shared Equity Home Buyer Helper pilot program was a complete failure. An analysis of the NSW scheme found that it fell 94% short of its approval goals.

‘Help to Buy’ has failed before, and it will fail again.

When it comes to helping prospective first home buyers, this Government has tried nothing and they’re all out of ideas.

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Next steps

The Coalition has a set of policies which will promote supply by working with the private economy. We will get the houses built and tilt the scales for first home buyers through targeted demand side policies.

These suite of reforms will get home ownership back on track.

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