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

This scheme is going to support 40,000 nurses, aged-care workers and childcare workers that live in our communities to get into homeownership. They'll do it with a two per cent deposit, and the Australian government will help with 30 or 40 per cent of their mortgage. As part of the budget, we've expanded the eligibility for that scheme so that more Australians can get that help—help to those on middle incomes and to many more homes around the country.

We're making real progress on housing. Since we've been in government, half a million homes have been built around the country. We've got 28,000 social and affordable homes that are in planning and construction. A million Australians are getting an increase in Commonwealth rent assistance of 45 per cent, 150,000 first home buyers are being assisted and housing approvals are up by 22 per cent. There's a lot more work to do here. Housing has been central to our first term, and, if we're re-elected, it will be central to our second.

I want to contrast that with those opposite. Remember that they didn't even have a housing minister for most of the decade that they were in office. And get this one, Speaker: did you know that, for the entire first two terms of the coalition government, they didn't build a single social and affordable house around our country? Not for the entire first two terms! And, of course, we know that they want to cut $20 billion of investment in housing funding in the middle of a housing crisis. But I'm asked for alternatives on homeownership, and there's one that really stands out here—it's a real doozy—and that is the dud 'super for housing' policy. If you went into a laboratory and tried to cook up a way to make the housing problem worse, this is the policy that you'd end up with. It's going to increase house prices by about $92,000 on average across our capital cities.

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