Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Hansard source

I guess there are a few things that you can take from that question. The first thing you can take is that the $3 billion cut by the previous Howard government from social housing is their continuing policy. The fact is that, if funding had continued on the trajectory that it had been on under the previous Labor government, we would have 90,000 extra public housing homes in this country today. We have got 100,000 homeless Australians on any given night. If we had continued on the previous trajectory, there would have been 90,000 extra public housing dwellings. We will put that to one side! That does not matter!

The honourable member has asked why we would not spend extra money on building private housing. He may have missed the fact that we have set aside $623 million for a National Rental Affordability Scheme. He may have missed the fact that we have set aside $1½ billion for a first home owner boost—increasing the first home owners grant to $14,000 for existing properties and $21,000 for newly built properties. And what do people in the development and construction sectors tell me? They tell me that they are relying on these first home buyers—who are walking in off the street with the confidence to buy, for the first time in many years, because interest rates are low and the first home owner boost is giving them confidence—to keep themselves working.

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