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

Can I say to the member opposite who proposed this MPI that we are busy cleaning up the mess that they left us. Everybody in this country understands the time line around migration and fixing it and around housing and fixing that, and these things do not happen overnight. There's no silver bullet here. This takes hard work, something those opposite did not do. We've seen two reviews into migration, the Nixon and Richardson reviews, that said what a mess they left us in migration. Our home affairs and immigration ministers have been cleaning up that mess. They have been the ones making sure we rebalance our migration system so that we do get the skilled workers we need. Indeed, we are bringing in more skilled workers in construction than the former government did. We are working incredibly hard to turn this around. When it comes to housing, let's not forget that, every time we come into this place and introduce a housing measure, those opposite vote against it—every single time. Every single time we want to do something to provide more housing, they vote against it.

Of course, the member who was just at the dispatch box used to be the Minister for Housing, and when he was minister, particularly when it came to social and public housing but also when it came to housing generally, they always said it's a matter for state and local government. That was their attitude. The one thing they did was HomeBuilder—a good policy badly implemented. What did it do? Post COVID, it stuffed up the housing construction market; that's what it did. We had all these builders signing fixed-term contracts that they couldn't fulfil because of the supply chain issues. That's what they did. And we're busy cleaning up that mess too.

We on this side of the House want to work constructively with state governments and local government, and we want to help turn this housing challenge around. Just last night, with the state ministers, we had a ministerial council meeting where we took a decision to have outcomes: we're actually going to have a performance framework; we're actually going to judge how well we're doing. They had an agreement with the states and territories, and in five years they did not have one meeting with the housing ministers across the country. We've had seven in less than two years because we want to work with them to turn this around. That's what serious governments do; they do the hard work to fix the problem.

Unlike those opposite, we understand what an affordable house means. We are out and about visiting tenants of social and public housing, like the people I talked about in this chamber just this week—like Emma, who was at the new social and affordable housing that I opened in Prahran last Friday. It is 434 social and affordable homes, half social, half affordable. She said it had changed her life. She had spent years in insecure housing. When people get a home, they can build a community, they can get a job, they can get their friends and family together, they have pets, they have plans and they actually build a life. That's what having a home is about. That's what we understand on this side of the House.

That's why, when we came to government, the first thing we did was unlock $575 million that the former government had sitting there but did nothing with. What have we done? We've built homes already with that money. We have homes on the ground because we unlocked that immediately. In October, after getting elected in May, we expanded, improved and changed the First Home Guarantee Scheme. We've now helped more than 100,000 people into homeownership because of the changes we made. And we introduced our Housing Australia Future Fund—an election commitment that those opposite voted against and the Greens political party held up for more than six months. We finally got it through the parliament, and we actually got it up and running by November last year, and by the middle of January we had open tenders for the first round of funding. That tender round closed last Friday. I can say to the shadow minister for housing that he's going to be awfully surprised when he reads the paper today. He hasn't caught up with how many applications we're going to get for social and affordable homes to be built, to help Australians who need them the most.

In our first budget, we funded the National Housing Accord, with funding for 10,000 affordable homes. We set a national target for houses. Those on the opposite side said that target was too big, and then they said it was too small, and then they said it was too big; they don't know what they're talking about over there. We are doing considered, careful policy. We are pulling every lever we have available to us and encouraging the states and territories to do the same.

Last year we provided the states with $2 billion straight up for more social housing. That would build around 4,000 homes. Some of them already have tenants in them; they have been built and tenanted already. It's 10 months since we provided some of the states and territories with that money. For the states and territories that haven't given me a list of every single property they are building or have built, I have asked for it and I chase them up regularly because we want to get on with working with them to get more homes on the ground.

Then there was the National Cabinet decision last year—a historic agreement with the states and territories where we agreed on a new, ambitious national aspirational target to build not one million homes but 1.2 million homes. We put money on the table for the states and territories to reach that target; we put $3.5 billion on the table. The minister for infrastructure and I will, in the coming week, open up the Home Support Program, which is half a billion dollars for local and state governments to do the necessary planning and infrastructure so we can get more homes on the ground. As part of the National Cabinet decision we got an agreed national blueprint to do the planning and zoning reforms, to do the reforms that are necessary at the state and local government levels so that we can add to supply. That is critical.

Then we have been working right across the board to make sure that we can get Help to Buy up. We got the states and territories to agree to Help to Buy, our shared-equity scheme, so that we can, once and for all, have a national shared-equity scheme. We've seen how valuable these are, particularly in the state of Western Australia, with Keystart. We're talking about up to 40 per cent government equity for new homes and 30 per cent for existing homes. That, too, will drive supply. But those opposite came in here and voted against that just as they voted against the Housing Australia Future Fund. Now we've got the Greens saying they won't support it either. So, when we want to get more people into homeownership and to support low-income Australians into homeownership, we're getting people saying no.

Through National Cabinet, we also agreed to renters' rights, to have some national consistency for renters so that renters in the country, no matter where they live, understand what their rights and obligations are in terms of them and their properties. We want to encourage more longer-term leases and renters' rights around the country. We also, in our last budget, had the largest increase in Commonwealth rent assistance in more than 30 years, a 15 per cent increase to the maximum rate. We are, at every opportunity and at every level, using the levers that we have available to us. We have now invested more than $25 billion in extra funding for the states and territories, across the country, for social and affordable housing, for housing supply and for investments for renters.

We are taking this really seriously. We have now announced investments that will build more than 60,000 social and affordable homes. But, importantly, we need to add to supply. There was research done that said that our National Cabinet agreement for renters would put downward pressure of tens of billions of dollars on increasing rents because of that agreement—if the states and territories meet the national target. We want them to meet it, and we're working with them to meet it because we know how important this is. There is a lot of work to do, but you don't do this overnight. We're working as quickly as we can with other jurisdictions.

But those opposite don't have a policy on housing—actually, correction. They do have one: raid your super. Even those on the other side have said that what this will do is push up house prices. That's it. They have a policy that will push up house prices. Indeed, the current Leader of the Opposition said in 2017:

… you don't want to fuel prices, you don't want to create a situation that's worse than what we've got at the moment.

Quite right. The shadow finance minister, the then minister for superannuation, said it would probably push up prices. Interestingly, even last night, the newly appointed shadow minister for homeownership told the ABC that their super policy could push up prices. So you raid your super, you push up prices, you've got no super left and the house has gone up in price. Seriously, those over there have no ideas for how to get more Australians to have a safe and affordable place to call home.

We are doing the careful policy work, working with the other tiers of government to turn this around. As I said, we are busy cleaning up their mess in migration. We're busy cleaning up their mess in terms of housing and housing supply. We're busy building more social and affordable homes for the Australians that need them most, and those on the other side should get out of the way and support our policies.

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