Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2026 (No. 9) Second Reading

[12.14 p.m.]

Ms BURNET (Clark) - Honourable Deputy Speaker, I'm a little croaky, so I hope my voice holds out. I'd like to thank the Attorney-General and staff who have helped in formulating this bill before us, and I will make some points. I will be supporting it, but there are some points, and a lot of those follow on from Mr Bayley's comments in relation to the inadequacy in the overall approach to finding housing solutions for many, many Tasmanians. The second reading speech rightly acknowledges that over recent decades it's become harder for young people and those on low to moderate incomes to enter the housing market; this is undeniably true. However, we must also recognise that governments of all persuasions have contributed to that outcome.

For years, housing policy has been dominated by demand‑side interventions, grants, guarantees, tax concessions and now, equity schemes. The intention has always been to help people into home ownership, but too often the effect has been to increase purchasing power without increasing supply, and that tends to drive up prices, and I note the debate, just before the federal budget is coming down, on capital gains tax and reviewing of the taxation system there.

Even the Tasmanian government's traditional allies like the Housing Industry Association (HIA) in their report from March 2026, which is entitled Who is going to Build Macquarie Point Stadium? A Workforce Impact Overview, acknowledges - and they have become vocal critics of the government's housing policy settings, which are doing very little to get new houses out of the ground, one of the few ways we actually relieve the pressure on the overheated housing market. On page 2 this HIA report says:

If Tasmania were to deliver its proportional share of the national 1.2 million homes target, residential workforce needs would increase to between 21,900 and 27,900 workers.

And then over the page:

Tasmania is running its construction workforce at full capacity, and additional demand from new major projects will need to attract additional labour to Tasmania or risk increasing the cost of construction for this project, and residential construction. When a stadium or similarly large project enters the market, labour is pulled towards it because of higher wages, longer contracts and the prestige of working on a landmark build.

It goes on to say, further into this report:

This is why major projects, when introduced into a tight labour market without planning, inevitably drive delays and cost blowouts.

Labour scarcity pushes subcontractor prices up, fragments workforces and stretches build timelines. For a state already battling acute housing shortages, this is a concerning reality.

Without a coordinated workforce strategy that grows the labour pool, Tasmania will face the dual problem of a stadium under construction and a housing pipeline struggling to keep pace with demand. [tbc]

We can put all of these grants, guarantees, tax concessions and equity schemes into play, but if we don't have the demand being met, there are obvious consequences. If we don't look at our construction pipeline really vigorously and wholeheartedly, then we do not know how we are going to deliver those houses and help solve the problem.

As economist, Saul Eslake, has observed, share equity schemes like this one, Help to Buy, may assist some individuals into home ownership, but they do not significantly increase overall home ownership rates, and there is a real risk they can push prices higher, particularly in a constrained market. That point is especially relevant in Tasmania. We know that our housing market is tight and consistently rental vacancies, as a measure of that, are chronically problematic and currently under a 1 per cent rental vacancy rate.

We know supply is limited and we know the broader government settings, including major project spending, are placing additional pressure on construction costs and skilled labour. As I said, the HIA has recently highlighted the severity of workforce shortages and warned that demand for labour will only intensify.

Against that backdrop, any policy that increases buying power must be approached with caution. One of the central criticisms of past demand‑side housing policies is that they disproportionately benefit those who are already relatively advantaged or who would have entered the market anyway. This scheme, by contrast, is aimed squarely at people who would otherwise be locked out - so, that's a good thing. It is a limited, controlled intervention designed to expand access without opening the floodgates. It is not a broad‑based stimulus to the market. It is not an untargeted grant that simply flows through to higher prices. It is carefully designed with income thresholds, purchase price caps and limits on participant numbers. In fact, the thresholds are lower and the targeting is tighter than comparable schemes at the state level, including the government's own MyHome program, the First Home Owner Grant and stamp duty exemption.

I will be supporting this bill. I doubt it will have much of any impact on housing prices, though. I am concerned that initiatives like this increase buyer's borrowing capacity. They pose an increasing risk of putting people into homes who are not well placed to navigate the turbulent times ahead, which are going to massive increases in the cost of living and these interest hikes that just keep coming.

Now, will this scheme solve the housing crisis? No. Will it replace the need for supply‑side reform? Absolutely not. But that is not the question before us today. The question before us is whether Tasmania should opt into a national scheme that is more targeted, more disciplined and more limited than many of the policies that have come before it, and whether we should enable Tasmanians, particularly those on lower incomes, to access a program that might get them into a home. On that question, I believe the answer is yes, so I will support the bill. It is a bill that will help a very small number of people, though, and that number is likely to be less than 500 - but I'll wait to be corrected by the Attorney‑General if I'm wrong.

It's long past for this government to start thinking about the 30 per cent of Tasmanians who are in rental properties. That's the 200,000‑odd Tasmanians who are living in rental properties with very little long‑term security, with few rights, and who are competing for a tiny and ever shrinking pool of rental properties, creating a mass power imbalance in favour of landlords.

I now quote from the Rental Affordability Snapshot Tasmania 2026, which came out I think last week, from Anglicare. One of the key findings of this snapshot is that there were 770 properties listed, which is 9 per cent down in the 12 months, and it's less than half the number of properties available 10 years ago for rent. This is significant. If you look at the figures when this snapshot weekend was measured in 2013, the number of properties available for rent was 2677. If you fast forward to 2026, that number is 770 properties for rent, which is an incredible indictment on the government's response, and all of our response, really, in relation to assuring that Tasmanians can be housed. We have a huge problem. We have to pull every lever possible to make this problem go away. We need to be solving this and finding solutions for everybody and these include many vulnerable Tasmanians, as Mr Bayley has pointed out already.

The are 200,000‑odd Tasmanians who are living in rental properties with very little long‑term security, with few rights, and who are competing for a tiny and ever‑shrinking pool of rental properties, creating a massive power imbalance in favour of landlords. It is renters who are coming to my office, and no doubt to all our offices, with harrowing stories of the precarious situations they are finding themselves in, where the vacancy rate is 0.5 per cent. These are people who either can't afford to buy a house or for which home ownership is not suitable; constituents like single mothers with families who have been kicked out of their houses at the end of the lease for no reason whatsoever, only to find themselves in a market they cannot afford and where there are virtually no offerings.

These people far outnumber the people who might take advantage of the measures put in place by the government to support first home buyers, and it's a number that is only going to continue to grow, particularly under this government. I acknowledge the government is at least now reviewing the Residential Tenancy Act, three years after promising at a national level to give renters a better deal. Better late than never, but it's not good enough. This is an urgent situation that is only getting worse and it's well past time for the government to shift the dial for renters, not only for first home buyers