Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Griffith for moving those amendments. The government has sought to engage in a cooperative way with the Greens party on the critical legislation to help get more social and affordable homes on the ground. I note that the member for Griffith has flagged, along with the amendments before the House, further amendments that may come in the Senate, as well as additional matters. I have offered, for the member for Griffith along with other members of this place, to engage on any amendments that may improve the housing legislative package, and I want to thank people for their engagement to date.

I'm pleased that we will be able to support some amendments that are coming through, but I want to be clear that we do not support these particular amendments that have been moved. We don't believe that they improve the legislation. But we do want to continue to work with the Greens party, through the Senate consideration, to consider amendments that may improve the bills.

I would like to say that our commitments are ambitious but targeted. They're phased to deal with the capacity constraints in the construction sector, and they're designed to implement processes to fund the right projects in the right places. It is critical that the structure of the fund that we have designed has been deliberate. We understand that people have differing views and claims about that. But we want to get on and get the fund done. Creating a fund that delivers ongoing returns will protect it from whims of future governments. We believe that the fund will generate returns over the long term which will allow it to provide the annual disbursements to deliver a secure pipeline of funding for social and affordable housing in Australia, and that will provide certainty to the community housing providers and the scale of investment that will be required for new contributions to social and affordable housing, particularly from institutional investors who may be interested in this asset class.

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