Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the fantastic member for Macarthur for his question. It gives me a great opportunity to update the House on Labor's bold and ambitious housing agenda, an agenda that comes after a wasted decade under those opposite. As the Prime Minister reminds us, it was a decade for most of which those opposite did not even have a housing minister. That's how tapped out of this problem they were.

The election of our government changed that attitude. We have a Commonwealth government stepping up, leading the country and working with the states to get better housing options for Australians. We are working to get the country building more homes. We are getting a better deal for renters. Homeownership is a critical part of that agenda. In your electorate, Speaker, and in mine there are low- and middle-income Australians who have been locked out of the housing market, key workers who need and deserve government help to get into a home—childcare workers, teachers, nurses and cleaners. Labor's Help to Buy Bill is part of the puzzle in addressing this.

I'm asked what stands in the way. What stands in the way is those opposite. They say no to everything. For every good thing our government is doing, there is nasty negativity and reckless opposition, and on housing it is no different. But the biggest hypocrites of all are the Greens. For everything our government has tried to do on housing this term—

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