Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

On this program, we were not going to give rise to a situation where people passing themselves off as kitchen renovators were going to go and knock on the doors of pensioners, rip out their sinks and their dishwashers and then seek to claim some government subsidy. That's not the nature of this program. This isn't for do-it-yourself home renovations. This is about approved work of significant scale by certified builders to enable people to bring forward projects that they have put off and now can proceed with.

I note the derision that is applied by those opposite to someone who might be proceeding with a substantial renovation, a new build of their home, of some $150,000. The average loan taken out for a renovation is $164,000. I can tell you that's the case because there are families around this country who cannot afford to go and build a new home. Their families are expanding and their children are growing up; they can't afford to sell their house and go and buy a new piece of land and engage in a new construction. So, what do they do? They borrow money to expand their existing home and renovate substantially their existing home because they can't afford to build a $300,000 or $350,000 new home.

The opposition's derision of this initiative smacks of two things: (1) they never learnt the mistakes of their failed schemes when they were in government; and (2) they don't know what's going on in the suburban families of this country.

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