Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kooyong for bringing forward this matter of public importance. While we all agree we need to build more homes, the member for Kooyong and I also agree we need to build more finals campaigns for the Carlton Football Club—something that, unfortunately, I don't think is going to be happening this year, Member for Kooyong. It's causing me great distress in this place. Anyway, I thank the member for Kooyong for this matter of public importance.

We do need to build more homes for Australia. In fact, what we need to be is YIMBYs. We need more YIMBYs in this place—'Yes, in my back yard'—not NIMBYs, which is what the Greens are not only in our community but all around the country. There isn't a housing project that they don't like to oppose. Even on the building of social housing in my electorate, the Greens are running up and down the electorate saying, 'Not in our back yard.' There isn't a public housing project that the Greens aren't willing to oppose—certainly not in Port Melbourne.

We on the side of the House understand that we actually need to build more homes if we are to have more homes. You can't have more homes if you object to more homes, as the Greens like to do. If you object to a government program that would help Australians who have only up to two per cent for a deposit to get into the housing market, you can't then expect more Australians to get into the housing market, but that is the Greens' approach. They stand in the Senate with their fists raised high, saying, 'We don't want to support the government's Help to Buy scheme,' and then they complain that we don't have enough help to buy. This is the classic example.

But you wouldn't think that the Greens are doing this by themselves. No, it's not just the Greens. They have very good mates over there in the Liberals and Nationals. Those two groups are chummy. They are really tight these days, because they know that, if they work together, they can block as many houses as possible. They can block the Housing Australia Future Fund for ages. They can block the Help to Buy scheme. They can block the build-to-rent scheme. The Greens are as thick as thieves with the Liberal Party and the National Party, and they are willing to work together.

It would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Every single time that the government has tried to get back to the table and use the levers of government to try and ensure that there are more homes for more Australians, the Greens and the Liberal Party have huddled in their little group and said: 'We've got to block this one. We've got to work together to slow them down, because it's in our political interests to slow down the government.' That is their approach. It's all about politics and not about building more homes.

We know that right now Australians are doing it tough to get into the housing market. We know that in relation to the price of housing, when you look at the cost of building homes and the cost of going through the planning processes, a lot of the levers are not the levers of the federal government; they are the levers of local and state governments. Those are the levers that we absolutely need to be working on collaboratively with other levels of government in order to ensure that there is more land and there are more opportunities for more homes to be built for more Australians. But the Greens and the Liberal Party are hell-bent either on taking the federal government out of all construction of homes—as those opposite did, having washed their hands of any responsibility for building homes in the social and affordable housing sector at all—or, like the Greens, on letting every opportunity become a political opportunity. The Greens want to build lots of campaigns but don't want to build many homes.

That's where we are right now. We are waiting for the Greens and the Liberals to stop working together so that we can get those two important reforms through the Senate. At the same time, we have a fantastic new Minister for Housing who is building off the really important work of the previous Minister for Housing, with $30-plus billion worth of investment into housing right across the country. That is all about trying to ensure that the federal government is doing its bit in investing in the construction of new homes right around the country, whether it be thousands and thousands of social housing homes or homes for women and children fleeing domestic violence. We know that too many women and children have that wicked choice between staying in a dangerous place and having nowhere to go, and we need to do more to ensure that that doesn't become a reality for Australians, as we know it is each and every day.

We are also investing in the long-term housing pipeline to ensure that the federal government is doing its bit, but this really has to be a collaborative effort between state government, local government and federal government. It's an investment in budget and also an investment in reform. We need everyone saying yes. We need everyone working together. We don't need the Greens and the Liberal Party slowing things down and saying, 'Not in my backyard.' They're working together, huddled together and fighting against the Labor Party for votes. We should be building more houses, not building political campaigns like the Greens are in this country. So, we say yes to more homes, while the Greens are going to fight it each and every day.

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