Labor fast tracks plan to nationalise mortgage insurance

Senator Andrew Bragg
Shadow Minister for Productivity and Deregulation
Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness
Liberal Senator for New South Wales

STATEMENT

25 August 2025 

Labor fast tracks plan to nationalise mortgage insurance

Labor is fast-tracking its plan to radically expand the Commonwealth’s mortgage insurance scheme, the Home Guarantee Scheme. The government is incoherent on housing. It says it wants to cut red tape, but then it wants to become a universal property insurer and developer.

From 1 October, Labor will uncap the number of participants allowed in the scheme and remove all income restrictions and means testing, opening it to every first home buyer. Labor’s changes will allow the children of billionaires to be able to spend taxpayer dollars to buy their first home

Labor is exposing taxpayers to an enormous contingent liability, likely to be tens of billions. 

Labor should be honest: these changes amount to the nationalisation of Lenders’ Mortgage Insurance for first home buyers. They will wipe out the private LMI industry, along with FinTechs and other innovators offering market-based deposit solutions.

The government wasn't even going to consult with these industries about these changes. They only did a limited and secret consultation after private pressure from my office. The lack of transparency shown by the Albanese Government is breathtaking.

This is yet another Labor headline with no plan to actually fix housing or cut housing red tape. In their first term Labor introduced 5,000 new regulations, including over 1,500 in the Treasury and Infrastructure portfolios where housing resides. Labor has made it harder and more expensive to build new homes.

If Labor is serious, they should start by cutting their own housing red tape.