Brendan Coates

That's the issue with first home buyers grants.

That's the issue with lots of these other policies.

We think it's justified here because those income, people earning less than those incomes are precisely the people that are struggling to buy a home and are otherwise at risk of potentially being in poverty when they retire in 40 years' time.

And so we restrict it to those cohorts

So that you're making sure that for this scheme that you're putting on the table, the majority of the people that are going to take up the scheme are probably going to be people that would not have purchased a house otherwise.

It's not just people who would have bought anyway, but this just brings forward when they buy by a couple of years.

It means that you're targeting the benefit to those that really do need it.

That's right.

So again, like the income thresholds, you're wanting to target this scheme at those that wouldn't buy otherwise.

So the income thresholds are one way you do that.

The other way you do that is you say, well, look, this is really only for a scheme for people that are going to buy relatively cheap houses.

Sydney, there aren't many houses that are particularly cheap.

So we've proposed a threshold there of, say, $800,000.

Now, that would cover more than half of apartments in Sydney, but only 25% of houses.

And what that means is that if you are buying one of those homes, it's going to be for people who really, they'll only use this scheme if they have to.

It won't be for people who could buy more and decide to use this scheme to get some cheaper finance.

We would have different price caps, say, in Melbourne, in regional Australia, to reflect the fact that prices vary so much across Australia.

And this is one of the ways, again, of just making sure the scheme is actually targeted at those that need it.

We would start with 5,000 places a year because if you're setting up something like this, the government's going to have to be in a position

where it can do the paperwork, it can make sure and assess people are eligible, work with private banks, because a private bank would provide the loan for 65% of the purchase price.