Stamp Duty Concessions

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:12): My question is to the Premier. What does the Premier say to Michael Graham, who has spent the last five years saving for a house deposit, who still can't get to purchase his own home? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA:The Advertiser recently reported on Sunday that Michael Graham is currently renting. He has been trying to save for his home deposit for the last five years but said it was an uneven playing field for those without a partner or without access to the bank of mum and dad. He said he welcomed the chance to buy a suburban home and not have to pay stamp duty.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:13): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for putting a human face on the debate around housing policy, because it is a demonstration of the challenge that young people confront when they want to own a home.

We take very seriously the fact that there are young people in South Australia who have good jobs. They are working hard, they are contributing to the communities around them and their aspiration is quite simply the ability to be able to enjoy what they have seen their parents being able to enjoy, and their parents before them. I think that it is a major challenge and a major risk for our nation if we see intergenerational inequity emerge because people can't get access to a home, and to be able to own a home, and I am particularly concerned about young people being dislocated from the housing market.

We see that in the rental market, which is why we have worked really hard on rental reforms to give people who are otherwise in powerless positions a bit more of a say or a bit more security than would otherwise be the case. But we are determined to make a difference for young people because it is a serious risk and a serious issue.

What I would say to Michael and anybody else in this position is: we do you a disservice if we come up with something that sounds good but makes the problem worse. What people like Michael look to in political leadership and in government is to not race towards a short-term populist political response. What they look to us to do is to actually do the things, including the hard things, to make a difference.

We have done some hard things. Our position on investment in water infrastructure and its associated impact on water bills is known. Coming in here with a piece of legislation to change a reform that was instituted by a former Labor government is not always the easy thing to do either. We have made these decisions because they are hard and because we know they are the ones that are going to make a difference. It would be wrong of a government, in our view, to make a change that helps one but actually hurts the many.

What we have to try to do here is actually have a structural change in the economic equation that is driving the difficulty for so many young people in particular, and that is the supply and demand equation. You don't have to have done an economics degree to appreciate that housing prices are going to continue to escalate at a pace that embeds intergenerational inequity unless you address supply, and demand is up and supply needs to keep pace. If we give Michael more money to bid for that home and then give Jenny, who also might want to bid on the same home, more money, they both have more money and they both bid that money at an auction, and guess who wins? The person selling the home, not them. That's what the Productivity Commission tells us.

So what I would say to Michael is: the only way he and every other young person in this state will have a better opportunity to own a home at a price point that is moderately affordable is to actually deliver more supply, more stock, into the system—not just to build up the bank of mum and dad that he misses out on by artificially increasing the equity value in their property by inflating the price it gets sold at. What we have to do is aim to get more supply into the system. That is what independent economists have argued for and that is what we are delivering.