Doorstop Interview 01 July 2026

‍Subjects SMSFs, Taxes, Housing Supply, Budget

E&OE…......

Senator Bragg

We heard from number of industry bodies and businesses that are involved in finance, housing, and superannuation. And what is extraordinary about our meeting is that it looks like as many as 10,000 houses a year are going to be lost as a result of the Government's ban on self-managed super funds investing in property. Now, I would have thought that in a nation which needs a quarter of a million houses each year to house its residents, we should be doing everything we can to get new housing supply moving. But the Government's dirty deal with the Greens means that there'll be 10,000 fewer houses each year for Australians. And I think that is a bitter pill for Australians to swallow when you consider that their negative gearing and Capital Gains Tax changes were already going to reduce housing supply by 35,000 according to the Treasury. So, extraordinary incompetence, bizarre—they're just some of the words that come to my mind. But also, negligence. The Government didn't even bother to model the impact of this change they did with the Greens. And when we asked Penny Wong in the Senate this week, she said, "I have no idea what the actual numbers are." So, extraordinary stuff, probably a new low for this Government. And what I'm going to do is invite the members of the industry bodies and also the businesses to say a few words about this crazy change.

James Austin

Thank you, Senator. James Austin, Chief Financial Officer of Firstmac Group. We're a non-bank lender based in Brisbane and we're the largest lender to SMSF funds. We do currently fund around 1,500 properties a year to new developments. So it is a significant amount of new supply coming in. And the other point I would make is that the notion that SMSF investing is for wealthy people hoarding properties is just not true. Mostly, this is where people have a deposit, they don't have a deposit outside of superannuation, and it is a place where they can buy a property for their retirement. So without this, it does take that away from them.

Peter Burgess

Thank you, Senator. Good morning everyone. Peter Burgess, CEO of the Self Managed Super Fund Association. Look, we think there's a clear argument here for new properties to be carved out of this ban on self-managed super funds being able to borrow to invest in residential property—to align with the government's own policy settings, where they've made a clear distinction in their housing policy between new homes, which do add to the stock of property and the supply of houses in this country, and existing homes. So, there is no question that this ban on residential property will have an impact on housing supply. Thank you.

Ashley Bramich

Thank you. Ashley Bramich, Director of Colliers Project Marketing. We are the largest seller of off-the-plan property in Australia. We are not here necessarily to challenge Treasury's estimate of 4,000. We anecdotally have figures that are significantly higher than that. I'm sure that will come out in due course. I stand here today to paint a clear picture of the consequences and the impact that this decision is going to have on the development industry and, more importantly, towards the accord of 1.2 million homes to be delivered over the next two years, and the Housing Australia Future Fund, which is there to deliver much-needed supply of affordable property of 40,000 over the next five years. There is no doubt in my mind, having conversations with developers in Australia, that the consequences of this will see projects shelved and projects not proceeding. So I put the question to the Labor Party and the Greens: which part of this legislation makes sense when you are restricting supply and the pre-sales that are critical to developer funding to get projects out of the ground to deliver the much-needed affordable housing that Australia needs? Thank you.

Richard Webb

Richard Webb from superannuation-related CPA Australia. I'm not going to add much to what my colleagues here have stated, but of course, since the 1st of July, adding this sort of red tape to superannuation at the same time that two of the biggest changes to super are coming in—in the form of payday super and Division 296—means that we actually do need to sit down and have a look at what the holistic outcomes of such policy are with full consultation of the sector. Thank you.

Simon Croft

Simon Croft, Housing Industry Association, Chief Executive Industry and Policy. We are now two years into the National Housing Accord with a target to build 1.2 million homes over the next five years after 2029. HIA's forecasts show that we are going to fall 200,000 homes short of that target. Treasury's modelling about the negative gearing and capital gains tax changes in the Federal Budget papers indicated that that would result in a 35,000 reduction in supply. This latest change on self-managed super funds is another blow to that one, an increasing supply. We know that this plays an important role, particularly in pre-sales agreements for apartments and multi-residential dwellings and the missing middle, which state and territory governments have been undertaking significant reforms to try and unlock. So these changes come at the worst possible time. And we'd say at a minimum, these changes should be aligned to the rest of the Budget changes in the taxation and just be carved out for new supply. Thank you.

Senator Bragg

So as you've heard today from the industry, this is an insane judgment that's been made by the government, which was political. Now, why would you have primary tax legislation which makes a distinction between new and existing houses, but then ban every SMSF from investing in any house? It's just insane. And I believe that this has been put forward by commercial interests which want to damage SMSFs, which hate the investors behind SMSFs, and this is not a genuine policy that helps anyone. Because no one can point to the beneficiary of a policy which bans SMSFs from investing in houses. I'll make the point again: many of these houses are new houses. Sometimes it's 30 or 40% in a new apartment block which is attributed to an SMSF. The person who owns the SMSF can't live in the house. So by definition, this is a policy which denies housing to Australians. The person who owns the house can't live in it. So if you're wondering why we have higher rents and why housing is stuffed in this country, it's because the government doesn't have a brain.

Journalist

Just ask, how did you come to that 10,000 figure in new supply?

Senator Bragg

So there are a range of industry estimates. We've heard from builders, developers. We've heard from SMSF industry people. The Government say they think it's about 4,000, but it seems that it would be at least 10,000 based on the evidence that's been anecdotally collected from the industry today at the roundtable.

Journalist

Just on house prices, seeing another fall in June nationwide, biggest fall since 2022. What do you make of that? Is that a welcome change that we're seeing house prices go down?

Senator Bragg

I think these are blips and bumps. Ultimately, the fundamentals are very bad. The Government has brought in 2 million people since they won the election in 2022, and they've only built 600,000 houses. Now, we are still building not enough houses, and our population is still growing very quickly. So the fundamentals haven't changed. So I suspect that affordability, which is the key in housing, is only going to get worse under this Government's policy suite. Now, what you've heard today is the government have a deliberate design feature to cut housing supply. So I can guarantee you that if the Government hates housing, then it's going to be more expensive in the long run.

Journalist

So do you think house prices are going to increase even though today the Coalition have been out and about yelling about housing prices dropping? What's the real case then?

Senator Bragg

Well, I'm not a house price forecaster. But what I can tell you is the fundamentals are crooked because you've got population growth which is strong, and you've got a housing supply system which is very small. So ultimately, in the long run, you are going to see price pressures and you are going to see affordability get worse because they haven't addressed the fundamentals. This Government loves spin and gimmicks. And so far, they've had gimmicks like the Housing Future Fund doesn't build houses. They've had 5% deposits. They've had these tax changes which actually constrain supply. What they need to do is to build a quarter of a million houses in Australia each year.

Journalist

So you're not worried about buyers entering negative equity then?

Senator Bragg

I feel very sorry for people who have been egged on by the Prime Minister when he's been peddling his 5% deposits if they go into negative equity. But this is about the long-term trends. And long-term trends, the trajectory under this government has been appalling. They inherited a housing system which was supplying 200,000 dwellings a year. They've crashed it down to 170,000 a year, despite massive investment, billions and billions of dollars. So things are getting worse, not better.

Journalist

Senator, and I guess anyone from industry if they want to comment as well. What do you have to say to industry super funds still being able to buy properties, you know, allowing investments with tax incentives and so on, well SMSFs have just been traded as a political deal? Do you have a comment on that?

Senator Bragg

I'll comment then anyone else can remark. But the whole point of this original amendment was designed to help the super funds get more market share. The big super funds hate SMSFs because they hate people taking control of their own destiny, and the Government loves paternalism, which is why they love superannuation. So this deal was all about smashing the self-managed super funds and giving a leg up to the big funds, which are able to invest in property, buy houses, and the Treasurer has actually rigged the system for them so that they can cover up their stamp duty costs and also get billions of dollars in money from taxpayers through the Housing Australia Future Fund boondoggle.

Peter Burgess

Yeah, look, I think these rules have been in play now for over two decades, and many people have benefited from the retirement savings by being able to borrow to invest in residential property. This ban removes that as an investment option for many people, perhaps their only opportunity to get into the residential property market. So, that's it.

Journalist

Got one for Mr. Croft. We're going to see dwelling approval data come out shortly—10 minutes away—but I just wanted to get your view. Is there anything that's actually happened in terms of policy settings that you think will help turn things around, given that the most recent data suggests dwelling approvals are still falling?

Simon Croft

Yeah, so our indication talking to our volume builders is right now that they're finding about a 50% drop in foot traffic through their display homes and through new home sales. So we are deeply concerned about that with the confidence. Confidence for consumers, confidence for homeowners is critical in terms of investing in housing. With these taxation changes, they certainly put a massive dent in that confidence. And so we are deeply concerned on those numbers and the broader numbers on the National Housing Accord. We're two years into that target, and we are, as I said, falling 200,000 homes short of that over our forecast period. So we need to be unlocking all forms to be boosting supply. Things like enabling infrastructure funding, which was in the Budget, which was disappointing that there was some positive measures in the Budget to cut red tape, to boost productivity, funding for enabling infrastructure, but then they've been unwound by these taxation changes.

Journalist

Do you think that consumer confidence will be a temporary rebound over the next few months once the Budget is effectively in the rear-view mirror? Or is it something that will be sustained over the longer term?

Simon Croft

It's hard to forecast those sort of things, but we do know that confidence when there is uncertainty—from taxation changes, from a number of changes to the, on July 1 from the new financial year across super, minimum wage increases, you know, there is a raft of changes that businesses now have to adapt to. And so all of that is impacting productivity and time that builders need to get on site to actually be able to build the homes that Australia desperately needs rather than trying to navigate all these regulatory and taxation changes that just seem to keep coming down the pipeline at them.

Senator Bragg

Okay, thank you. Thanks everyone. Thanks for coming.

[Ends]