Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would really encourage the member for Nicholls to speak to the Minister for Industry and Science, Minister Husic, who spoke about modular housing just yesterday in this parliament. So I really would encourage the member to reach out, because, on this side of the House, unlike on the other side, we do understand that safe and affordable housing is central to the security and dignity of all Australians. I genuinely don't believe those opposite do think that this is the case, and the evidence we've seen, with the wasted 10 years with the gift of government, just demonstrates that.

We have acted and will continue to act on putting in place short-, medium- and long-term plans to tackle the challenges left behind after a decade of very little action by the former Liberal-National government. We have already committed more than $25 billion in new housing investments over the next decade. This includes the single biggest investment in social and affordable housing in more than a decade, with the Housing Australia Future Fund now established. This will help the government's commitment of 30,000 new social and affordable rental homes in the fund's first five years.

We're a collaborative government, so we're working with states and territories to help them meet the ambitious new national target to build 1.2 million well-located new homes over five years from July through our $3 billion new homes bonus and $500 million Housing Support Program. This builds on the Housing Accord, which includes federal funding to deliver 10,000 affordable homes to be matched by states and territories. We're delivering immediate action like the $2 billion social housing accelerator for around 4,000 new social rental homes across the country in partnership with the states and territories. This is on top of an additional $2 billion in financing for more social and affordable rental housing through Housing Australia.

We've unlocked up to $575 million in funding from the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, with houses already under construction across the country. A further $1 billion has now been committed to this facility, and Housing Australia has already supported 4,937 new homes since our government came to office. If it sounds like we're doing a lot of work, it's because we are, unlike what happened under the watch of those opposite, when they wasted 10 years in government, which is such a great shame.

We're also delivering new action to help Australian renters, expanding opportunities for homeownership, without requiring people to steal from their retirement savings for the future, and we're bolstering frontline homelessness services. We've led the way on renters' rights, securing a better deal for renters, and, for the first time in Australia's history, we're coordinating progress towards a nationally consistent policy to require genuine reasonable grounds for eviction. Renters are benefitting under other work we're doing with state and territory governments, as we support them to change standards, including limiting rental increases to once a year, and minimum rental standards. We're helping to ease the pressure on Australians feeling the pain of rising rents by increasing the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance by 15 per cent, because it's really important to understand that many people in our country also rent. We're offering new incentives to boost the supply of rental housing by changing arrangements for investments in build-to-rent accommodation.

We've significantly expanded the Home Guarantee Scheme, which under our government has already helped more than 100,000 people into homeownership. We're working with states to deliver the Help to Buy scheme, supporting up to 40,000 low- and middle-income families to purchase a home of their own. We are doing so much, and I suspect I'm going to need more than the five minutes allowed in the debate today to talk about all of the action our government are taking to ensure that people have a safe and affordable place to call home, including the work we're doing to ensure that we have a national plan to end homelessness, as part of our $1.7 billion National Housing and Homelessness Agreement.

What's really important is that, instead of blaming migrants, for instance, for the housing crisis in this country that those opposite oversaw for a decade, we are actually taking responsibility as a government to build houses. We're getting on with the job, as I described. We don't sow division and fear in our communities. Many of us, including, I note, the member who brought this MPI to the House, represent multicultural electorates, and it would be irresponsible for us to blame them for the housing crisis left behind by those opposite. So we're taking action.

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