Senator WILLIAMS (New South Wales) (15:15): Senator Urquhart talks about affordable housing. How soon we forget! I have not forgotten the days of the so-called world's greatest Treasurer, the days of Mr Keating, when I was paying a 25.25 per cent interest rate. Many Australians had 17 per cent home loans. Lucky they were regulated—they could have been 25 per cent as well. We talk about investment, and we discussed it recently especially in relation to buying farms. On 1 January 2013, the Labor Party brought in a regulation about investment. If you earned more than $250,000 a year, gross—your wage, in our case our travel allowance, and superannuation—and you bought a business it was not tax-deductible but if you bought a house it was. If any one of the 226 politicians in this building went and bought a house, they could get a tax deduction for. But if anybody wanted to buy a farm, no, they did not want that—let the foreigners buy them. I discovered this the hard way— Senator Urquhart: Mr President, I rise on a point of order on relevance to the questions asked. Senator WILLIAMS: I am getting to it. Senator Urquhart: He is getting to it. I draw the chair's attention to his comments. Senator Brandis: Mr Deputy President, on the point of order: the motion is not that we take note of questions; we take note of answers. The answers canvassed the issues raised in Senator Williams's speech. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: And also, as senators contribute to the debate, generally information is added, and that brings it within order. Senator WILLIAMS: Those opposite have a plan to take to the people of Australia at the next election—they have a plan to raise taxes, to bring in a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. I wonder what that will do for costs in the cement industry, the brick industry, the timber industry and the building industry as a whole? Senator Conroy: Even Senator Brandis is struggling to see the relevance of this. Senator WILLIAMS: I think even Senator Conroy would realise that. I know he is a climate change sceptic—I think he is, anyway. So housing affordability means let's go to the next election with a plan to put a tax on everything in our building industry. How is that go to make houses cheaper? How are people in the cities ever going to afford a house? That is why I keep telling them to come out to the country towns—$250,000 will buy a lovely three-bedroom, brick veneer home in a nice area where I am fortunate enough to live, in Inverell in northern New South Wales. It is a real problem. When it comes to affordability and tax, those opposite have one plan—raise taxes and spend more. What have they announced so far? About $8 billion worth of increases in taxes and some $26 billion or $30 billion of extra spending. So tax more but spend even more to bring the budget further into the red and mortgage our children's futures away. I do not know when the election will be—it might be sooner than we expect, though it is due in August-September-October, as the Prime Minister has pointed out. It may be sooner depending on some bills that come to this place. Those opposite, in the Labor Party and the Greens, will oppose the ABCC legislation because they want to look after the CFMEU and see that they are protected while they disrupt the building industry. When the election comes we will get back to this whole issue of taxation and our plans for the future of Australia. Our plans will be spelt out and costed—there is no doubt about that. We will keep continuing to try and clean up the financial mess we inherited. If you go back to 2008-09, we had a huge terms of trade surplus. Iron ore was worth a fortune, coal was worth a fortune and we were exporting huge surpluses each month. The government was raking in a fortune in taxes from those big companies. But of course they spent more than they brought in and the debt continued to grow and grow. And that was during good times. If we do not think the good times have gone, the loss announced by BHP today is enough to scare everyone—a $5.7 billion loss. That indicates exactly how the resources sector is going and how tough the budget will be. Of course those in the Labor Party and the Greens will oppose us getting the budget in order. They have even opposed their own savings plan in this place. Labor opposed some $6 billion worth of budget cuts that they had planned to make themselves. When we won government, they opposed them. We will see it all come out before the election, and hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.