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

I want to thank our terrific member for Tangney, and the member for Tangney would know that 87,000 people in his electorate this week got a tax cut to help them with the cost of living. He also knows housing affordability is a serious issue in his electorate and, indeed, around the country after what we inherited from those opposite when it comes to the housing challenges.

We need to build more homes in Australia. We don't have enough homes and we haven't had enough homes for a long time because of what we inherited from those opposite. That's why we have a national housing target to build 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade. We've backed up this ambitious target with $32 billion in new housing initiatives from the federal government, on top of what the states and territories are doing. This $32 billion Homes for Australia plan will help us train more tradies, turbocharge construction and streamline planning to build the homes that Australia needs.

We're working with all the tiers of government, including some of the local government people that are here today. We're also working with the state governments, the construction sector and the community housing sector to meet this shared national target. We all have to have our shoulder to the wheel if we're going to achieve this target. It is ambitious, but we need to be ambitious to turn around the housing challenges.

We know that boosting supply is the answer to this. Indeed, our historic National Cabinet meeting in August last year made some decisions around planning and zoning and reforms that will help with that. The independent analysis of our supply plan by the Grattan Institute found that it would put significant downward pressure on rents that could save renters $32 billion in payments, when it comes to rents. That's how you deliver real cost-of-living relief, not by pushing up energy prices with risky nuclear reactors—and it's also not by blocking housing legislation in the parliament.

What have we seen again in the last week or so? We have seen those opposite, with their friends in the Greens political party, block yet more housing in the Senate. Indeed, they want to block homes of every kind—to block social and affordable homes, as when those opposite blocked the Housing Australia Future Fund and delayed it, with the help of the Greens, for months. We could have homes under construction today under the Housing Australia Future Fund, if it wasn't for those opposite and the Greens.

Indeed, they want to block our Help to Buy scheme. The Prime Minister said today that we've got support from the Queensland LNP for a shared-equity scheme, but we've also had it from the Liberal state premier in Tasmania and the former Liberal premier in New South Wales, who all support shared-equity schemes. But apparently those opposite don't support shared equity anymore.

We want to build more homes for people to buy, more homes for people to rent and more homes for Australians that need a safe place each night.

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