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

I'll get to supply in a minute, Member. This is important new support, so it's deeply disappointing that some in this place are using the bill as an opportunity to grandstand, frankly. They should be helping Australians and not doing that.

Our government does have a mandate to deliver Help to Buy, a critical new support, and we know it will be life-changing for the tens of thousands of Australians that are able to access it. It will join the improved and expanded Home Guarantee Scheme to support Australians into homeownership. A key Labor election commitment, the Help to Buy scheme and expanded Home Guarantee Scheme help eligible homebuyers secure finance through government support.

The Home Guarantee Scheme has now assisted more than 100,000 Australians into a home since our government was elected. In fact, almost one in three first home buyers in the last year were supported by the scheme—a significant increase on the last year under the former Liberal government. The Home Guarantee Scheme, of course, now comprises the First Home Guarantee, the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee and the Family Home Guarantee. The Albanese government delivered on its commitment to introduce the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee three months ahead of schedule, in October 2022, and has now assisted more than 15,000 people in regional Australia into homeownership.

We've also, of course, expanded the Home Guarantee Scheme to help more Australians. On 1 July last year, we opened it up to joint applicants, family and friends, not just single and married or de facto applicants. We also, with the Family Home Guarantee, importantly, expanded it from single, natural or adoptive parents with dependants to eligible borrowers who are single legal guardians of children, such as aunts, uncles and grandparents.

The Help to Buy scheme and Home Guarantee Scheme are critical parts of the government's broad, ambitious housing agenda, but they're only parts of it. Since coming to office, we have now committed an additional $25 billion in new investments in housing over the next decade. We're working with states and territories to help them meet their ambitious national target of 1.2 million well-located homes through our $3 billion new homes bonus and our $500 million Housing Support Program. We're also, of course, delivering the single biggest investment in social and affordable housing in more than a decade with the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, now established and generating returns. In January we opened the first round of funding for new projects from the Housing Australia Future Fund as we began to deliver on the commitment of the 30,000 new social and affordable homes in the fund's first five years. We've also got our National Housing Accord, which includes the 10,000 affordable homes that will be matched by states and territories with an additional 10,000 affordable homes. For our share of that we now have applications open together with our Housing Australia Future Fund.

We of course have paid the $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator to the states and territories for new social homes. Some of those are underway now, and they will deliver around 4,000 new social homes across the country. We unlocked $575 million from the National Housing Infrastructure Facility for social and affordable housing and we're now adding a further $1 billion to build more social housing rentals as part of that.

In the last budget, we also facilitated an additional $2 billion in financing for the Affordable Housing Bond Aggregator, administered by Housing Australia, to provide cheaper long-term loans to support new affordable rental homes. To date, Housing Australia has supported 4,937 new homes since our government came to office. We've also provided the states and territories with an additional $1.7 billion through the one-year extension of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement. We're continuing to work with the states and territories and stakeholders on the National Housing and Homelessness Plan, a shared national vision for tackling the country's housing challenges, while we progress a new housing and homelessness agreement with the states and the territories. Together, these represent the most significant housing reforms in a generation, after a decade of very little action from the former government.

The commitments highlight our government's understanding that there's no single solution to our nation's housing challenges. It's much more complex than that. We have to pull every lever we have available to us to achieve real change, and that's exactly what we're doing. That's why the Help to Buy legislation is so critical. That's why thousands of Australians who have been locked out of homeownership are calling on us to do more. Here's what I've heard from some of the people around the country about Help to Buy. A couple in Brisbane in their mid-60s told me they have sufficient funds to enter into a shared equity arrangement for a house but wouldn't be able to buy one in their own right. For them, Help to Buy would mean security and not remaining, in their words, 'at the mercy of the rental market for the rest of our lives'.

An ACT resident who doesn't earn a huge wage and is studying and working full time told me he and his partner were looking to become homeowners. They'd moved to Canberra from rural New South Wales and saved hard to get where they were. For them, Help to Buy would mean they could finally afford a property. A Sydney resident expressed to me the difficulties of buying a home in the city but told me Help to Buy is 'a breath of fresh air that gives first home buyers some hope'. These people want real change. They want assistance to get into homeownership.

Our government is working right across the housing spectrum, with homelessness, with more sociable and affordable rental homes, with market homes and with homeownership for more people. We want to add to supply, which is why we're working with our colleagues in the states and territories to get more homes on the ground as quickly as we possibly can. The answer in Australia is more homes. We currently have fewer homes than the OECD average. We need to get more homes and we need to better utilise existing homes. I absolutely agree with the member for Calare on that, but I don't think what he's proposing is the way to go about it. What we want to do is use the fees from foreign investors investing into new property in Australia and create opportunities for more Australians.

See this speech in context