Morrison took aim at Labor’s housing policy after he was asked by a reporter if the Australian dream of owning a home is dead.

“It has always been hard, and it is hard particularly today, but what the figures show is that 164,000 Australians last year [got] into their first home - that is up almost 70,000 on what Labor was achieving when they were in office,” Morrison says.

“Labor has a plan where they want the government to own your home. It’s not only that, you are last in line when it comes to your home. The bank has the first call over it, the government has the second call over it, and you come last when it comes to your own home.“

Under Labor’s housing policy, announced over the weekend, the government would help 10,000 modest income earners co-buy a home each year by contributing up to 40 per cent of the purchase price.

After criticising the policy, Morrison was asked by a reporter why he supported a similar co-ownership scheme in operation in Victoria five years ago.

He says he made the comments in the context of the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

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“There is a scheme like this in Western Australia. There is a scheme like this in South Australia. The take-up of the schemes is very limited and one of the reasons for that is people want to own their own home,” he said.

“They don’t want the government to own their home. If people want to go into a shared equity mortgage, those products have been around for a long time. The private sector provides those products and what I was referring to in 2011, I think it was, was in the middle of a global financial crisis when there was a squeeze on credit.

“So I was proffering sensible interventions that would enable the private sector to give people more choices.”