Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is an interesting motion from the brave member for Groom. Here the member wishes to raise housing policy, where our government has already been much more active in the last two years than the previous coalition government was for over nine. He wishes to raise inflation, which we have reduced over the last 18 months after the Morrison government left Australia with rising inflation. Two years ago, when we came to office, the inflation rate was 6.1 per cent and rising. The member will desperately want to say it was rising for something we did, but he knows the truth. The inflation rate sits at 3.6 per cent today. The member for Groom should be congratulating the government if he is truly concerned about inflation. There are many people in Hasluck paying a mortgage, well over 50 per cent of households. All I can say is I am glad they have a federal Albanese Labor government willing to act on housing, willing to act on inflation and willing to act on cost-of-living challenges, because if the coalition were in power right now we would all be in much worse position on every measure.

A housing crisis doesn't appear suddenly. We were elected with a host of policies on housing. If there is a housing crisis now, and there is, then it is either because the previous housing minister didn't know there was a problem, which would be an indictment, or he knew but didn't do enough to deal with it, which would also be an indictment. It wasn't, in fact, until the second Morrison ministry that the coalition bothered to even have a minister named for housing and they didn't sit the member for Deakin in the cabinet. Before that we'd have to go back to the second Rudd ministry, where we find the Minister for Housing and Homelessness, the Honourable Julie Collins, in the cabinet, where she sits now. That by itself shows the real difference between the coalition's attitude to housing policy, which is mainly about scoring political points, and the Albanese government's real commitment.

But the other thing that it shows is the difference in our commitment to funding. We have $6.2 billion in this year's budget, part of $32 billion of new housing initiatives and extensions by this government. The $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the HAFF, will support the construction of more social and affordable homes into the future. The coalition voted against the HAFF. The Greens delayed it by six months in order to grandstand, but the coalition voted against it.

The member for Groom and his colleagues have had a bad record in opposing legacy programs. They opposed Medicare, they opposed universal superannuation, they managed to oppose the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund and now they have opposed the Housing Australia Future Fund. They had a chance to redeem themselves a little by supporting the Help to Buy legislation but it looks like they're opposing that too. They are opposing a lot of housing policy but they still have time to bring motions like this one.

We have also provided for a $9.3 billion national agreement on social housing and homelessness, doubled Commonwealth homelessness funding, committed $1 billion for housing for women and children fleeing family violence, and we're investing in the construction industry with targeted fee-free TAFE places. There's more but I have only got the five minutes.

I'll mention instead, as the motion mentions, the cost of living. We have taken a wide array of measures to assist with the family budget. Many of these would never have been enacted or even dreamt of by the coalition: investments in Medicare, bulk-billing, cheaper medicines, free urgent care clinics, fee-free TAFE, tertiary prac payments, energy bill relief, back-to-back rental assistance increases, cheaper child care, expanded parental leave, so many more things. We want people to earn more and keep more of what they earn so, yes, wages are rising for the first time in 10 years as a result of deliberate government policy and, yes, from July, every Australian taxpayer will get a tax cut. We have taken the hard decisions to combat inflation while providing cost-of-living relief.

Where was the member for Groom when we capped gas prices? The opposition's unwillingness to take action would have seen inflation much higher than it is now. In the budget just delivered, the government's responsible targeted cost-of-living relief, including the energy bill payment and the increase to rent assistance, is estimated to reduce headline inflation by half a percentage point over the year and is not expected to add to pressure on inflation more broadly.

In summary, the government's significant investments and national leadership in housing and its targeted and anti-inflationary cost-of-living assistance mean that Australians generally, particularly those that are doing it tough, are in a much better position than they would have been if there was a coalition government now. I am sure I am absolutely not alone when I say that I oppose this measure.

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