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

I want to thank the member for Indi and the other crossbenchers, and obviously the member for Kennedy. We do understand and want to protect the interests of people in rural and regional Australia; we share them. We want to make sure that key workers in regional areas and regional towns across the country can get access to affordable housing. We know how serious this issue really can be. As I said to the member for Indi today, we got it at every single roundtable in the lead-up to the Jobs and Skills Summit, but it was particularly a big issue in regional areas. We do understand. It's one of the reasons why we brought forward the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee, for instance, in terms of getting people into their first homes, and now more than 1,700 Australians are there under that scheme.

We do think this legislation will address housing in regional, rural and remote Australia. As I indicated to the member for Indi, whilst we won't be supporting the amendments she's making to the Housing Australia Future Fund, we do want to support some of the amendments, particularly in relation to the Housing Supply and Affordability Council. In the Senate and the Senate committee process, we want to look at how we make sure that rural and regional Australia get their fair share from the fund, because we do want to make sure that all Australians, no matter where they live, get access to safe and affordable housing.

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