Page 246 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 30 May 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
not only effectively and efficiently but also in the best possible interests of our clients.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.03): Mr Speaker, I will be quite brief. I think that the previous speakers have traversed in detail and very well the various aspects of public housing, but not a great deal has been said about private housing. I think a word needs to be said in defence of the private home buyer and the private home financier. I was a bit worried about the terms of reference for this housing policy review. I would have thought that it would have been more appropriate had it been called a public housing policy review, because we are still talking about effective community participation and words of that kind, which are all very good but obviously relate to public housing and not to private housing.
I was concerned about that because I have been through the Labor Party's policy that they campaigned with. Nowhere in Labor's policy is there even one word about private housing, no assistance for private first home buyers, no assistance for any private buyer. It is 110 per cent related to public housing.
We must not lose sight of the fact that by far the greatest preponderance of people out there are private people who borrow privately and build privately. They have nothing to do with welfare housing, nothing to do with public housing, nothing to do with the special needs of some of the special groups that have been discussed here today, and I think we have to keep those people in mind. These are the people who have stood on their own two feet to the best of their ability. They have entered into the notion of every Australian's dream of buying their own home. What is happening is that the dream is developing into a positive nightmare, because they are finding they simply cannot afford to keep up the increasingly high mortgage payments.
This is not a question of a public policy in the sense of public housing. It is a question of public policy in terms of the control and management of the economy. Until such time as our Federal representatives across the lake do something positive to take the heat off the home buyer in the private market and place the burden for our overseas trade balances where it belongs - on the people who are importing the consumption goods and forcing the imbalance in our overseas balances - until the managers of our economy at that level do something to rectify that, the private home buyer in this country will continue to suffer.
In conducting this inquiry I exhort the Minister to set aside for the moment Labor Party policy, which focuses primarily on public housing, and to look in the broader sense at the needs of all home buyers. I refer particularly to private home buyers who at the moment are finding themselves literally going bankrupt. The terms of reference, wide as they are, do not seem to cover that aspect, and I would like an assurance from her that it is intended that that aspect be covered.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .