Senator RHIANNON (New South Wales) (15:56): I move:

Senator RHIANNON (New South Wales) (19:37): It is a week since Treasurer Joe Hockey said: 'If housing was unaffordable in Sydney nobody would be buying it.' This disastrous bit of ad libbing from the Treasurer gives us a useful insight into exactly how out of touch with reality he is. The latest Fairfax Ipsos poll, released a few days ago, shows that 80 per cent of Sydneysiders believe that housing in Sydney is unaffordable-80 per cent!-and just three per cent believe that local housing in Sydney is 'very affordable'.

The Australian Greens will move for a full debate on housing affordability and negative gearing in the Senate next week, in response to Treasurer Hockey's wild-eyed predictions about the effects of negative gearing.

"To try and dissuade the Treasurer from just making stuff up in future, the Greens will move for an evidence-based debate in the Senate when Parliament resumes," said Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.

10 Jobs For Joe Hockey
[That Would Make It Tough To Buy A House]

When it comes to housing affordability, Treasurer Joe Hockey has advised people looking to buy a home to "get a good job that pays good money".

The Australian Greens have welcomed Treasurer Joe Hockey's attempts to contribute to the debate on tax reform and housing affordability, and encouraged him to continue offering free advice to people struggling to stay afloat in Australia's overheated housing market.

"In bringing forward our proposal to abolish Negative Gearing, the Greens have sought to highlight the unfairness of tax concessions flowing to property investors at the expense of renters and first home buyers," Australian Greens housing spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam said.

The Australian Greens have today announced a policy package to reform negative gearing and use the proceeds to boost affordable housing, building more than 14,500 new homes for our most vulnerable.

The policy package, released today by Senator Scott Ludlam, proposes to remove negative gearing for new investment properties and invest the proceeds in social and public housing instead.

"Low and middle-income Australians should not be forced to subsidise property investors through their taxes - it is fundamentally unfair," Senator Ludlam said today.

Under questioning from the Greens Spokesperson for Finance, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, the Treasury Secretary John Fraser said that, for Sydney and parts of Melbourne, the housing market was ‘unequivocally’ a bubble.

When Senator Whish-Wilson later questioned the Reserve Bank, Assistant Governor Malcolm Edey added that “…a lot of people do think it’s a bubble – serious people think that – and we agree that this is a situation where the market is strong, it’s overheated, it’s a risky situation…”

A Greens' report on the uptake of home solar photovoltaic (PV) power has found WA householders have installed equivalent capacity to two coal-fired power stations, exposing the state government's lack of planning and preparedness as people act to reduce household power bills.