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

‘Boring.’ That is boring, is it? Housing homeless Australians is boring—that tells us everything we needed to know. Housing homeless Australians is ‘boring’. Housing Joanna and her family and providing work for these builders is ‘boring’. That tells you a lot, doesn’t it? I will tell this side of the House, because they are interested in housing homeless Australians, that Yarra Community Housing, which will run these properties in north Fitzroy, thought they would have to sell properties in other parts of Melbourne to upgrade these properties. Instead, with $17½ million of our stimulus money, they will be able to keep all of their properties in Melbourne and they will be able to house more homeless Melburnians.

The member for Wakefield and I visited a 50-year-old home in Elizabeth Grove. That was going to be sold. Instead, it will be upgraded and returned to public housing stock. In Glebe, New South Wales, in April I visited a four-bedroom home sitting there empty, impossible to live in. Now it has a family with four kids living in it. Is that pretty boring, is it—a family with four kids living in a home? I have seen these homes right around Australia—old houses, old blocks of units, run-down, starved of repairs, being prepared for sale because there was no money to fix them, instead getting the major upgrades they need so they can be used for social housing. With the help of the states and territories and the great work of builders and tradies right around Australia, we are returning these homes so they can be used by needy Australians.

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