One Nation leader Pauline Hanson speaks at the National Press Club in Canberra, Australia on June 17, 2026. Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has responded to claims that her party’s support of government-backed mortgages and a “People’s Bank” could cost Australians “hundreds of billions.”
Under the proposal first earmarked by Senator Malcolm Roberts, the government would back a publicly-owned People’s Bank and provide 30-year mortgages to prospective homeowners at the fixed rate of five percent interest.
In Roberts’ 1996 maiden speech, he said a publicly-owned bank was needed once again, after the Commonwealth Bank—established by Labor in 1912—was fully privatised that year.
Yet in an article by the Australian Financial Review, which quoted Richard Holden of the University of New South Wales, funding such an entity could end up being 10-50 times higher than One Nation’s slated $11.5 billion funding allocation.
The economist also said nearly half of all mortgage holders could end up refinancing with the government due to the lower cost of the loan.
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Hanson responded saying the $11.5 billion was a cap.
“It involves taking the $11.5 billion assigned to Labor’s useless Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) and issuing government-backed mortgages instead,” Hanson said.
Labor’s signature $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) is an investment vehicle aimed at generating returns that are then pumped into supporting the building of social and affordable housing.
The government argues the fund should be self-sufficient and alleviate the need for new taxpayer funds each year, with initial hopes of supporting 6,000 new social and affordable homes per year.
One Nation has pledged to scrap HAFF saying it equates to about $83,000 of financial support per dwelling, considering the size of housing demand and the fund’s estimated returns.
“It is unclear what the government thinks it can achieve by allocating just more than $83,000 a dwelling.”
Meanwhile, the centre-right Coalition also believe HAFF is too slow to deal with the housing crisis.
It favours allowing Australians to draw $50,000 from their superannuation towards housing deposit.
