Doorstop 02 July 2026

Subjects Housing, SMSFs, Super Funds, ASIC Disclosure Rules, Foreign Investors

E&OE…......

Senator Bragg

Well, as it comes to the end of this sitting period, I think it's important that we consider the Government's housing priorities and why the Government has been so bad on housing. We have a government that is spending billions of dollars which has been focused on building bureaucracies, not on houses. Billions of dollars for fewer houses. We are getting 30,000 fewer houses a year under this Government compared to the last Coalition Government. Now, two of the reasons are that the Government is focused on the wrong priorities and that it is a government for vested interests. What we've seen in this fortnight is a government that has banned new housing supply from SMSFs. So SMSFs which invest in off-the-plan developments are now banned from providing new houses to Australians. It seems extraordinary to me that any new housing developments will be cancelled by Canberra. But that is the system we now have with the ban on SMSFs. Meanwhile, the Government is rolling out the red carpet for foreign investors. They want foreign investors to invest in housing, but apparently not Australian individuals and families, which would be, under normal circumstances, able to invest in off-the-plan new houses for Australians. The other point is that the Government loves institutional investors. It loves big super funds. That's one of the reasons why it decided that it would ban SMSFs from investing in property, because it wanted to help the major super funds. Now, what it's also doing is now bending the disclosure rules so that the super funds can invest in houses and they can cover up their stamp duty costs. The Treasurer and the Government have managed to get ASIC to make these changes to the disclosure rules, and I think it's very fishy. So we've asked the Integrity Commission to look at these issues, because it seems bizarre to me that the Government have gone out of its way to help this vested interest buy houses and cover up their stamp duty costs to members. I can't think of any other example where a government has gone out of its way to lower the disclosure arrangements, to lower the disclosures for people, so that people can see less information about their own money. I think it's just extraordinary. Okay? Thanks a lot, guys.

[Ends]

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