Michael Sukkar MP

LABOR’S HOUSING CON IN TATTERS

THE HON MICHAEL SUKKAR MP
Shadow Minister for Social Services
Shadow Minister for NDIS
Shadow Minister for Housing
Shadow Minister for Homelessness

MEDIA RELEASE

Friday, 28 October 2022

LABOR’S HOUSING CON IN TATTERS

Six months in Government, one Budget down and yet Labor still hasn’t built a single new home.

We haven’t even seen any progress, costings, or implementation plans for the half-baked housing promises it took to the election.

All we heard from the Treasurer is plans to make plans, commitments to develop strategies and meetings for the sake of meetings. No action.

Labor pledged $10 billion to its Housing Australia Future Fund before the election but has still failed to outline how it will deliver its promise of 30,000 social and affordable homes over five years. This commitment requires the delivery of 6,000 homes in the first year of the fund, and the creation of thousands of jobs, yet not even one home has been built to date.

Labor is now promising to deliver an additional 10,000 affordable homes under their ‘National Housing Accord’ (over five years from mid-2024) with additional funding of just $350 million, equating to a contribution of $35,000 per home. The cost per dwelling for this latest promise just can’t be taken seriously, even by the economically illiterate standards of Labor.

It seems Labor wants to use this ‘Accord’ to subsidise superannuation funds to invest the savings of Australians into other people’s homes – with no support for those Australians to purchase their own home.

Even more comically, the Government has also now announced a Rudd-esque ‘aspiration’ to build one million ‘well-located’ new homes (over five years from mid-2024), shamelessly attempting to take credit for business-as-usual private sector investment. For example, the number of dwellings commenced during the last full five calendar years from 2017 to 2021 was 1,029,043 (which encompassed the entire period of pandemic lockdowns).

So, from mid-2024 when the Albanese Government will have been in power for over two years, they are promising to deliver fewer houses to Australia’s growing population than in the five years before they were elected.

A promise is not a plan, and the Treasurer’s housing announcements have all the headline-grabbing hallmarks of a typical Labor budget, with no ability to deliver real results for Australians.