Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Housing. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government's HomeBuilder grant will support the more than one million workers whose jobs rely on the strength of the housing and construction sector?

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Stirling for his question. Yes, there are more than a million Australians whose livelihood relies on the residential construction industry. As we've all seen, one of the consequences of COVID-19 has been, since about March, very few new home sales. As the Master Builders association has said, that jeopardises about half a million jobs in that industry in the second half of this year.

The HomeBuilder program addresses that and supports those many hundreds of thousands of new jobs. It provides a $25,000 grant for people who purchase a new home or rebuild a home. It will ensure that those people will be able to buy very typical stock—a house-and-land package, a new apartment—or to knock down and rebuild an existing home. We know that, according to the Master Builders association, it's going to fire up the industry. In fact, the Master Builders association has said:

HomeBuilder will be a lifeline for an industry facing a valley of death in the coming months. It will mean more new homes, more small businesses and jobs are protected and provide a stronger bridge to economic recovery for our country.

The jobs we're talking about are not just the jobs we think about on a typical building site—the carpenter, the plumber, the electrician. There is an entire chain of jobs that rely on the residential construction industry. In regional Australia it's the timber mills that create the frames and the trusses. In manufacturing it's the bricks, it's the glass, it's the tiles. That's why it supports such a large ecosystem. And I must say we have been very pleased with the response to the HomeBuilder program over the weekend. In fact, in Domain today it was reported:

The chance to build a brand-new home for a bargain has lured thousands of Aussie buyers into the market as developers across the nation report skyrocketing sales and inquiries mere days after the launch of the federal government's new HomeBuilder scheme.

The article goes on to say:

… with first-home buyers leading the new-build charge.

So every time members opposite criticise the HomeBuilder program, which is supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs, they are saying to those first home buyers, they are saying to those people who are upgrading their homes, that that $25,000 is not good for them but, more importantly, it is not good for the many hundreds of thousands of people who will be employed by this industry. It again shows that the Labor Party have no idea about the economic recovery ahead. (Time expired)