Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is incredibly frustrating and even distressing to continue to sit through the rank hypocrisy of the Greens political party, particularly the member for Griffith. Their contributions to this very important debate are both cruel and dishonest. They deliberately spread misinformation. They deliberately create expectations amongst vulnerable people, people who are desperately in need of public policy support in order to ensure that they are afforded secure housing. They deliberately create false expectations for these people, based on the spreading of false policy logic. It is the ultimate act of cynicism. It is appalling behaviour.

It is the politicisation of a fundamental public policy challenge in our society purely for the purposes of harvesting votes from vulnerable young people. It is purely based on their interest, their political interest, in harvesting votes from vulnerable young people. The member for Griffith and his Greens party colleagues have no legitimate interest in resolving the housing challenges that our society faces. Anyone listening need only think about where their political interests lie here. There are no votes for them in resolving the housing challenges. Their votes are generated by misleading vulnerable people and creating the false expectation that there is a magic public policy solution to this very, very difficult public policy challenge.

The member for Griffith spends all of his time self-promoting and self-briefing in little weekend spreads in the weekend papers about what a genius he is and what a contribution he's making to saving Australian society. It's utterly pathetic. I say again: it is cruel and it is dishonest. The Greens have sunk to the pathetic lows of Trump-style populism when it comes to dealing with these critical matters. It is so distressing for parts of our community, parts of the community that I represent, who are facing critical housing challenges and for whom those housing challenges spur innumerable additional personal challenges, be they health, family, employment or economic. All that the Greens political party wants to do is score cheap political points based on that human misery. The Greens are a party of populist self-promotion and protest. They take no interest in legitimately addressing this public policy challenge.

The Labor Party is a party of government. Our government—the Albanese Labor government and this Minister for Housing—are relentlessly focused on driving secure housing for every Australian in our society. We accept there are very significant challenges to overcome in order to achieve this ambition. But dishonestly misrepresenting an apathy for further innovation, for further investment, for further pragmatic policy courage, plays no role in the very legitimate public debate that we should be having about addressing these challenges. Others have outlined some of these, but I want to touch on them again.

First and foremost, the housing challenge in Australia will only be solved by addressing the issue of supply. There is no other magic solution to this challenge. We need to build more homes, we need to do it quickly and we need to do it all across our country. It's why we have set a very ambitious target. We're very clear that it's a very ambitious target: 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade, through the Homes for Australia Plan. Our most recent budget included $6.2 billion of new investment to build more homes and to support Australians into secure housing, which brings our total spending in this area since being elected to $32 billion. This includes the single-biggest investment in social and affordable housing— (Time expired)

See this speech in context