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

It is the single biggest investment in affordable and social housing in more than a decade. It means more homes in every corner of this country—our cities, our regions, our towns; more homes for women and children impacted by family and domestic violence; more homes for older women at risk of homelessness; more homes for our veterans, who need a safe space to spend the night; and more homes for Australians needing an affordable place to call home. This is our government working for Australians, and we're going to keep working—working with our state and territory colleagues, working with the construction sector, working with the community housing providers and working with institutional investors to deliver on these homes. We know the largest community housing provider in New South Wales, St George Community Housing, have, for example, over 470 social and affordable homes lined up ready to go today, and they are not alone. Across the country, providers and states already have in place plans so that, when this fund actually passed the parliament, they could get on with building. We're ready to build more homes. Thanks to the Housing Australia Future Fund, there'll be funding for new social and affordable homes in perpetuity.

I'm proud that we've delivered on one part of our ambitious housing agenda. We also, of course, have our new national target to build 1.2 million homes across the country, with our $3 billion New Homes Bonus, our $500 million Housing Support Program, our $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator, our National Housing Accord, our boost to Commonwealth rent assistance, the additional $2 billion in financing for social and affordable housing, new incentives to boost the supply of rental housing, the $1.7 billion extension to the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, leadership on renters' rights, changes to the Home Guarantee Scheme and the introduction of the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. We've got a lot of work to do, we've done a lot and we're going to keep working hard every day so that more Australians have a safe, affordable place to call home.

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