Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Longman for his question. All Queensland MPs in particular—but also, I think, all other MPs in this House—understand just how successful the HomeBuilder program has been in igniting the residential construction industry throughout our country, in every major city, every regional centre and every small country town in Australia. In fact, in Queensland alone we have nearly 20,000 HomeBuilder projects, and nationally we have over 90,000 HomeBuilder projects, overwhelmingly being taken up by first-home buyers who are purchasing that typical house and land package—people entering their home for the first time. As the coalition government, we are the parties of first-home buyers, whether it's with the HomeBuilder program, whether it's with the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme or whether it's with the First Home Super Saver Scheme.

I remind the House that this time last year the residential construction industry was going to hit a cliff. New home sales had stopped virtually overnight. When we put HomeBuilder in place we were hoping to protect the up to one million jobs in the residential construction industry. Never did we think that the HomeBuilder program would not only support those million jobs but create new jobs. By the end of last year, new home sales were up by 32½ per cent. New home sales mean jobs for tradies on construction sites—whether we're talking about carpenters, plumbers or electricians—and in the entire supply chain, which includes the manufacturing workers who make the bricks, the tiles and the glass, and the timber workers who make the frames and the trusses.

I'm asked by the member whether there are any alternative policies. Shamefully, the Labor Party opposed the HomeBuilder program. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition, in describing HomeBuilder and talking about the first-home buyers who have been using HomeBuilder to buy new homes, said that all it would be good for was pearl taps and gold baths. This Leader of the Opposition is completely out of touch. He's so out of touch that he has not learnt his lesson. They're still attacking homeownership. I saw reports in the AFR just a couple of weeks ago that Labor's housing taxes, to quote the AFR, are not dead. So the Labor Party do not want to support the residential construction industry or first-home buyers, and they have not learnt their lesson. The coalition will always stand for the residential construction industry and new-home buyers. (Time expired)

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