Liberals Steal One Nation Housing Policy In Budget Reply

Lowering immigration to reduce demand for housing and banning foreign ownership of residential property to increase the supply of housing, will be policies very familiar with One Nation supporters because we’ve been demanding these measures since before the last Federal election.

Labor’s housing and rental crisis is engulfing Australia. Vacancy rates in our capital cities are around 1% or lower. Rent increases are going through the roof. The average Australian’s mortgage payments have risen more than $20,000 per year. Homelessness is increasing around the country. Yet the Albanese Labor government – under which more than a million people have arrived in Australia – is doing nothing about record immigration rates.

Labor has forecast lower immigration numbers in last week’s Budget, but we simply have no reason to trust this estimate. In its previous two Budgets, Labor substantially underestimated the numbers that would flood across our borders.

However, it was Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s response to the Budget which has raised eyebrows: a pledge to substantially lower immigration numbers and to introduce a temporary two-year ban on sales of residential property to foreign investors.

Sound familiar? Of course it does! It’s straight out of One Nation’s comprehensive housing policy – not that Peter Dutton gave Pauline Hanson any acknowledgement. However it shows very clearly that One Nation doesn’t have to command the balance of power in the Senate to influence national outcomes: all we need is effective policies that make sense to Australian voters, like supporting nuclear energy and opposing carbon capture and storage in the Great Artesian Basin (also copied by the Coalition).

Ultimately, we know the Coalition can’t be trusted to deliver commonsense policies (even the ones they steal from us). While in power from 2013-22, the Coalition spent $600 million of taxpayers’ money preparing for a national digital ID system it fully supports in lockstep with Labor, along with net-zero emissions and historically high immigration. Since Labor’s latest Budget the Coalition has made a lot of noise about comprehensive tax reform, but it had nine years to deliver this itself and failed to do so. And let’s never forget Morrison’s deals with social media giants to silence Australians protesting vaccine and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic (plus his secret ministries) or Dutton’s long reluctance to take a stand on the referendum until long after One Nation took its principled position on the divisive indigenous voice to Parliament.

No, we won’t forget a thing and we’ll be reminding voters at the next election. The Coalition has as much to answer for as Labor and the Greens, but if they can so shamelessly steal One Nation’s policies there may yet still be hope for them – and consequently, the Australian people.