Under Labor, the aspiration of home ownership has become out of reach.
Building approvals have fallen to their lowest level in over a decade. Despite promising hundreds of thousands of additional homes, Labor has actually delivered almost 20% fewer completions on a per capita basis than the Coalition, including the period that the economy was shut down due to COVID.
Only the Coalition has a comprehensive plan to build more new homes and make housing more affordable . This includes building our workforce of Australians with skills across the construction trades, as part of our plan to boost the number of trainees and apprentices in training across Australia to more than 400,000.
Our comprehensive plan will deliver tens of thousands of new homes each year by unlocking shovel ready developments and generating a skilled construction workforce.
The Coalition will:
- Invest $1.25 billion over four years to allow first home buyers who purchase a new property to live in, to claim a tax deduction for the interest payments on the first $650,000 of their mortgage for the first five years of their mortgage.
- Implement our $5 billion Housing Infrastructure Programme to construct essential infrastructure like water, sewerage and power to quickly unlock up to 500,000 new homes.
- Reduce Labor's record migration program to sustainable levels, to free up almost 40,000 extra homes in the first year, and well over 100,000 homes in the next 5 years.
- Ban foreign investors and temporary residents from purchasing existing homes for two years.
- Allow first home buyers and older women to access up to $50,000 from their super towards a deposit for their first home.
- Provide SMEs with $12,000 to support putting on a new trainee or apprentice, with a focus on building and construction to deliver the workforce to build our new homes.
- Work with financial regulators to change lending rules to help young Australians access a mortgage, this will include reducing the overly cautious serviceability buffer.
- Stop the growth in red and green tape to allow builders to get on with the job of building more homes by freezing further changes to the National Construction Code for 10 years.
- Restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission to tackle union corruption that has contributed to driving up building costs by up to 30 per cent.
As part of our thorough development work on all aspects of this policy over more than 12 months, the Coalition worked closely with industry and the Parliamentary Budget Office.
In relation to the first home buyer mortgage deductibility scheme, the policy announced by the Coalition is based on numerous variants costed for the Coalition by the PBO, but the announced cost was prepared by the Coalition rather than the PBO.
The final parameters selected refine our policy to reflect current housing market conditions. Their impact is less than $50 million over the forward estimates, and is included in our $1.25 billion costing for this component.
In relation to our plan to grow our construction workforce, our policy is focused on getting more apprentices and trainees onto construction sites to build more houses faster.
Under Labor, the number of apprentices has plummeted. Australia has lost over 90,000 apprentices and trainees across the country because of Anthony Albanese and Andrew Giles' failings.
The Coalition's plan will allow around 40,000 new apprentices and trainees each year to take up training in critical skills and occupations like carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers, electricians, sheet metal workers and welders - all critical feeders into our construction workforce.
Only the Coalition has a comprehensive plan to build more homes and make housing more affordable.
Shadow Minister for Housing, Michael Sukkar said the aspiration of home ownership has become out of reach.
"Interest rates and rents have had their highest increases in over a decade and building approvals have fallen to their lowest level in over a decade. Labor has failed to deliver a single additional new home under its failed housing policies.
"The Coalition won't accept a situation where a generation of Australians miss out on the opportunities for home ownership that previous generations enjoyed."
Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Minister for Industry, Skills and Training Sussan Ley said supply is key and that is why the Coalition has a comprehensive skills plan on the table to boost the construction workforce with more to come.
"The Coalition has put $10,000 on the table for construction apprentices through our Key Apprenticeship Program as well as $12,000 for builders to put on an apprentice through our Apprentice and Trainee Wage Support.
"We have a target of returning the skills pipeline to over 400,000 again. We will prioritise construction workers in the migration program."
"Labor have funded 600,000 Free TAFE courses in three years yet the number of Construction Trade Apprentices starting a trade has dropped by 30 per cent. Free TAFE has not lifted the number of trade apprentices, and Labor is pledging fewer courses ongoing which means even fewer apprentices. You can't promise more homes unless you can deliver more apprentices and Labor's policies aren't working."
