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

We all in this place hear stories from people who are dealing with rising rents, who are forced to couch surf or who are contacting our electorate offices and have nowhere to go. This is what our Housing Australia bill is about; it's about people. So I say to the members in this place who seem to have forgotten that: please don't just write to me about social housing and homelessness; get your senators to vote for more social and affordable housing. I say to the member for Riverina, the member for Bradfield, the member for Hughes: go back to your electorates and say you stood in the way of more social and affordable housing for your constituents when you write letters to me. Say that to them.

We introduced our Housing Australia Future Fund to help people—to build tens of thousands of social and affordable rental homes for some of the most vulnerable in our community. Our housing agenda is ambitious because it needs to be. I want to remind members in this place that the Housing Australia Future Fund will build more social and affordable homes in its first five years than were built over the past decade from the combined contributions of the Commonwealth and state and territory governments. That is what we're talking about. There's a substantial number of homes for people in need—for women and children who are fleeing family violence, for older women at risk of homelessness and for veterans who don't have a safe, affordable place to call home. For the people that need help, we want to do it with the Housing Australia Future Fund. I say to the Liberal senators and the Greens senators: please don't stand in the way. You can not address our housing challenges by standing in the way of real action. This is not an opportunity to delay action, because there is a cost to delays, and the costs are being borne by the people that need our support the most. (Time expired)

See this speech in context