Our Plan to Fix the Economy and Protect our Way of Life

For many Australians, their greatest and most valuable asset is their home.

Over decades, they have been able to rely on that investment to grow and provide security for themselves and their families.

It is the deposit for the kids. It is the retirement plan. It is the guarantee behind a grandchild's first mortgage.

It now appears the Albanese Government is destroying that dream for many Australians.

The value being wiped off the housing market since the Federal Budget is now beyond alarming.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts the total value of residential real estate at $12.8 trillion, exactly two thirds of all household wealth in this country.

Since home values peaked in March, $461 billion of that has already been erased, a fall of 3.6 per cent.

Sydney prices have slumped 7 per cent and, according to property analysts Cotality, are on track for the biggest downturn in 40 years.

In the three months to August alone, dwelling values fell 4.7 per cent in Sydney, 3.9 per cent in Melbourne and 3.1 per cent nationally. And Western Australia is not immune.

The banks are telling us there is more pain ahead.

The Commonwealth Bank is forecasting peak-to-trough falls of around 13 per cent in Sydney, 12 per cent in Melbourne and 9 per cent nationally.

NAB expects further falls of 10 per cent in Sydney and 9 per cent in Melbourne in 2027. HSBC predicts a 13 per cent drop.

This is not a cooling market. This is a collapse in confidence, and it has a cause.

Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers promised, time and again before the election, that they would not touch negative gearing or capital gains tax.

Then, on Budget night, they did exactly that. With the help of the Greens, they rammed those taxes through the Parliament.

The market has responded precisely as anyone with common sense predicted.

New home lending fell 5.4 per cent in the June quarter, nearly 8,000 fewer new home loans. Buyers are sitting on their hands.

As one financial adviser told The Australian newspaper last week, nobody wants to buy into a market they think could be cheaper in a year's time.

But the damage goes well beyond the price of a house.

Much of the estimated $6.2 trillion that Baby Boomers expect to hand down to their children and grandchildren over the next two decades sits in housing.

Financial specialists are now reporting that falling values are delaying those plans.

Parents who intended to downsize, draw on equity or go guarantor for a child's first home are pulling back.

Social researcher Mark McCrindle put it plainly: as older Australians see the biggest asset in their net worth decline, it causes pause and concern.

The bank of mum and dad is shrinking at the very moment young Australians need it most.

Think about what that means for a family in Perth.

A couple in their sixties who worked and saved for 40 years, who wanted to help their daughter into her first home, now feel they cannot. Their daughter cannot afford it on her own. Both generations lose.

That is Labor's housing policy in practice. It does not help young Australians into homes. It takes the ladder away from their parents.

And the cruel irony is this that even as the value of Australians’ homes falls, homes have never been less affordable.

Mortgage affordability reached an all-time low in 2025-26. Mortgage repayments relative to income are the highest since 1989.

Mortgage interest now swallows 7.4 per cent of household disposable income, up from 2.9 per cent when Labor came to office. Falling prices and rising rates are the worst of both worlds.

Renters are no better off. Rents have risen 24.8 per cent since Labor came to office, against wages growth of just 16.1 per cent.

The median rent is now around $670 a week.

Why? Because Labor is simply not building enough homes.

Australia is completing about 173,000 homes a year against the roughly 240,000 needed to meet Labor's own target.

At this rate, Labor will fall around 335,000 homes short of its 1.2 million homes promise.

Almost 13,000 construction businesses have gone broke since Labor came to office, around 60 every week.

Labor's own Budget papers admit its tax hikes will mean higher rents and 35,000 fewer homes over the next decade.

You cannot tax your way out of a housing shortage. Fewer homes, higher rents, and confidence smashed. That is Labor's trifecta of failure.

It sits inside a wider economic failure.

Real GDP per person is lower today than when Labor came to office. Real disposable income per person is down 3.3 per cent.

Productivity is around 5 per cent lower. Income tax paid is up 39 per cent. And the markets are now pricing in another interest rate rise, the last thing any family with a mortgage needs.

Jim Chalmers calls this economy robust. Australians are living a very different reality.

There is a better way.

Under Angus Taylor, the Coalition has released Our Plan to Fix the Economy and Protect our Way of Life.

On housing, it means less migration and more homes.

We will cap migration to housing completions, so population growth never again outruns the supply of homes.

We will invest $5 billion in housing infrastructure to unlock up to 400,000 new homes.

We will cut unnecessary construction red tape to reduce the cost of a new home by up to $70,000. And we will axe Labor's housing taxes.

Alongside that sit lower taxes and cheaper power, getting government spending under control and backing the private sector to invest, employ and grow.

This is a plan built on a simple principle that if you work hard, save and build something for your family, government should not come after it.

I would ask every member reading this to do two things.

First, read the plan for yourself at liberal.org.au/our-plan and share it with your family, your neighbours and your workmates.

The people who need to hear it most are the ones who took Anthony Albanese at his word.

Second, keep telling us what you are seeing. The stories you send my office, of parents who can no longer help their kids, of tradies closing up, of young Western Australians giving up on ownership, are the stories we take into the Senate.

The Australian dream of owning your own home is not a relic. It is worth fighting for.

We intend to fight for it.