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

I move:

That the amendments be agreed to.

The Albanese government has a pretty simple belief: we want ordinary Australians on normal incomes to have the chance to own their own homes. Today this parliament will make that happen for 40,000 Australians who would never otherwise have the chance of homeownership.

Lots of aspects of what's going on in Australia with housing concern me but the one I am most worried about is this: 40 years ago, 60 per cent of lower income young people in our country owned their own homes. Today, that is close to 20 per cent. Housing is not just about bricks and mortar. What this statistic tells us is that the life experience of low-income young people is fundamentally different to how it was experienced a generation ago, and our parliament must do something about that. We want more Australians to have the stability and security that come from homeownership, to be able to put family pictures on the wall and not be told they can't, to make decisions with confidence, to know they are raising children in a safe and stable environment; for older Australians, to be able to grow old with security. That is what this legislation is all about. This bill is about Australia's nurses, childcare workers and disability workers. It is about older women who otherwise might be facing a retirement in poverty. It is about single parents who might be able to purchase the home that meets the needs of their families. This scheme builds on the enormous success of programs around the country run by state governments. In Western Australia, more than 100,000 Australians have gone into homeownership through a shared equity scheme.

Help to Buy is one piece of our government's very bold and ambitious housing agenda—$32 billion supporting our country to build more homes, get a better deal for renters and get more Australians into homeownership. Thousands of hardworking Australians who have been locked out of the market will now have a better shot at owning their own home. I want to say briefly of Minister Collins, who sits behind me, this would not have happened without her hard work and the work of her office, and I want to credit my staff also. I want to thank the crossbench. There are some people on the crossbench who bring enormous expertise and constructive dialogue with our government on housing and I thank them for that. And I thank the Greens, who eventually presided passage for this bill.

For all of us in this parliament, politics has many, many moments which feel highly performative and meaningless and then you get moments like this. It is not often that our parliament has the opportunity to change the lives of 40,000 people who need and deserve the help of government but we have that chance today. I commend the bill to the House.

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