Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I can hear some interjections, and I'm happy to go through a little bit of history for those interjecting. I note the member for Deakin is in the building here. He is someone who tried to fob off affordable and social housing to the states, something that we're not going to be doing. We're going to make sure that we're investing directly in affordable and social housing. But I will let the member for Deakin go through all the things that he didn't do while he was in government.

More importantly, on National Homelessness Week, we, the federal government, are going to start investing back into social and affordable housing. Curtin and Chifley, following World War II, invested in social housing. Whitlam invested in social housing. Hawke and Keating invested in social housing. In the global financial crisis, a great stimulus that the Rudd government made under the housing minister, Tanya Plibersek, was in social housing. It is a great Labor legacy that, when we are in government, we invest in providing essential housing for Australians.

We know that housing is a spectrum, that right across the housing industry people who are locked out of one part of the housing spectrum end up in another part. That means that people who can't afford to buy a home end up in the rental market, which drives up prices in the rental market. Less than one per cent of our rental market is available to those who are on benefits or on welfare payments such as the JobSeeker payment. That market is being crunched more and more as higher interest rates drive up the cost of borrowing, and so fewer and fewer people can get into the housing market. We are seeing a slight recalibration of housing prices but, ultimately, we are not seeing on the other end of the spectrum more and more properties being made available to those who are receiving benefits.

The only way we can deal with this is to invest in the supply of housing. That's the only way. In this National Homelessness Week I am really pleased to be part of a government that is going to put $10 billion into a housing future fund that will build 30,000 social and affordable homes. This is one of the largest investments—

The member for Deakin, in a bit, can go through all the things he didn't do in government, but I'm going to keep going. We are putting $10 billion into social and affordable housing, which will build 30,000 social and affordable homes in the first five years. This is the first time that a federal government has put a significant amount of money on the table in over a decade to invest in the construction of social and affordable housing. A portion of it will go towards women fleeing family violence. There will also be $200 million on the repair and maintenance of those currently in remote Indigenous communities, as well as a $30 million fund that will fund specialist services for veterans, which is something all members of the House support.

This does not happen unless the government decides to make it happen. For too long in this country the attitude of the former government was that matters of social housing, especially, were matters for the states. That is no longer the case. The federal government, the Albanese Labor government, is investing proudly in social housing. We are going to help make sure there are homes for Australians in this National Homelessness Week. (Time expired)

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