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

I want to thank our terrific member for Boothby. It was great to join her in Adelaide last week—indeed, in Tonsley—where we announced 350 new and improved homes for more than 600 South Australians. That announcement, of course, came one day after we announced more than a hundred new homes in Melbourne in the member for Jagajaga's electorate. Both of these projects and announcements came from our Social Housing Accelerator—the $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator. It is just one part of our $32 billion Homes for Australia Plan.

Our plan will help deliver more homes more quickly in more parts of Australia. We know that Australia doesn't have enough homes, and we haven't had enough homes for a long time. That is why we need our $32 billion Homes for Australia Plan. Our plan includes the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the single biggest investment in social and affordable housing in more than a decade.

The fund is also helping to deliver the Veterans' Acute Housing Program, with applications now open, as my colleague the Minister for Veterans' Affairs also announced last week in Adelaide. We are working hard to tackle the challenges of housing in this country and the challenges we inherited from those opposite. We know that you deliver real cost-of-living relief not by pushing up energy prices with nuclear reactors but by working every day to deliver more homes for the people of Australia.

I remind those opposite that the Housing Australia Future Fund was delayed for six months, thanks to those opposite and when they paired up with the Greens. They voted against it in this place. The first tender round of the Housing Australia Future Fund closed recently. It received hundreds of applications for tens of thousands of new homes. We'll be announcing the successful tenders in coming months, and I'll remind those opposite, when these announcements come, that they voted against this Housing Australia Future Fund. All they have on their side is their reheated thought bubble for housing—the super for housing—which we know will push up prices, wreck people's super and doesn't build a single home.

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