Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to take this opportunity to highlight the major impact that HomeBuilder has had in my electorate of Herbert. Without HomeBuilder our residential construction industry, which had already been doing it extremely tough after enduring a very long downturn, would not have survived. It was great to have been joined in Townsville last Monday by the Treasurer to meet locals and local industry people and to talk about the effects of not only HomeBuilder but also JobKeeper.

In Townsville, we had 27,100 people on JobKeeper, supporting more than 4,000 businesses to keep their employees, but by the start of the year 72 per cent of those had graduated off JobKeeper, which is fantastic. One of those businesses that has been able to move off the temporary government support is residential developer Maidmen Group. Glen Maidmen and his team told the Treasurer and me they've never been busier. Business is booming so much that the 25 employees Glen kept on during the pandemic thanks to JobKeeper are working harder than ever. The HomeBuilder grant has seen their inquiries and contracts surge. They've gone from weeks where they wouldn't close a sale to having dozens of contracts each week. They estimate they have about 250 homes being built right now in their developments which are supported by HomeBuilder. They think, Townsville wide, this number would be sitting around a thousand.

This is an unprecedented amount of building activity for Townsville. We've seen new home approvals in our city triple just recently. This means there are more tradies on work sites; more apprentices; more people going to the local shop, getting their bacon and egg roll as they roll into work. The flow-on effect is all through Townsville. In fact, there's so much building activity that the supply lines are struggling to keep up with demand. This is one of two main issues that have been raised with me as we prepare for the HomeBuilder package to come to an end in just a couple of weeks. I don't want to see people missing out on getting the grant because the builder couldn't start work on their house in time because of a lack of supply. The other issue is the wet season. With rain, with the potential of cyclones, there's blowout from the time you sign the contract to when the first slab gets laid. So I've written to the Assistant Treasurer, Minister Sukkar, to ask him to see if there is something we can do locally, because I don't think it is the builders' fault that they can't get the slab down because of the wet weather

HomeBuilder has been a lifeline for Townsville's construction industry, and I hope its impacts will continue to be felt months and years into the future. I want to thank the Treasurer and the Assistant Treasurer for their efforts on HomeBuilder. It's a fantastic grant.