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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I'll start again. We met with Grant and Heather, who explained that, in their building business, when the pandemic hit, sales stopped overnight. We announced the HomeBuilder program. It has ignited the residential construction industry in northern Australia. We've got nearly 4,000 new homes being built now in northern Australia, in and around the electorate of Leichhardt. That has been fuelled by the HomeBuilder program. One of the most important aspects of the HomeBuilder program is the support it has provided to first home buyers. It was wonderful to meet even more first home buyers in northern Australia. Christie in Cairns explained to us that, without HomeBuilder, there's no way she could have jumped the deposit hurdle to get into her first home.

The HomeBuilder program is built on a range of programs that the Morrison government have put in place because we are a government for first home buyers; we are a government for homeownership. The First Home Loan Deposit Scheme—highly successful—has allowed people to purchase their first home with a deposit of five per cent. The HomeBuilder program which we put in place allows people to build a new home with a five per cent deposit, and we extended that. In the budget just a couple of weeks ago we had the Family Home Guarantee. The Family Home Guarantee, I think, is a landmark policy for this House. We will now enable single parents—84 per cent of whom are women—with dependent children to purchase a home with a deposit of two per cent. I have been inundated by single parents around the country, including from the member for Leichhardt's electorate, saying, 'This will be the difference between me renting and me owning, and being able to provide my children with the security that they need through homeownership.' So we are the party of homeownership, whether it's HomeBuilder or the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme or the Family Home Guarantee, and we'll continue to support those Australians.

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