Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How will the Housing Australia Future Fund improve the lives of Australians, and what is standing in the way of the government building more homes? How does this legislation fit with the government's commitment to not leave people behind?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Jagajaga for her question. What we know is that those opposite want problems to get worse for Australians because they think that's how things get better for them. Their priority is all about the politics and not about the substance.

We know that the Housing Australia Future Fund was the centrepiece of my second budget reply. The Australian people voted for it. It's supported by the housing and homelessness groups across the board, whether it be the Master Builders Association or whether it be organisations like Shelter. It will work alongside our other policies, including the $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator, to build more homes in every state and territory. But those opposite have blocked this bill.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Deakin is now warned.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's exactly why we reintroduced the bill today. But it is what we've come to expect from the party of robodebt. The same ideology that produced robodebt still drives the Liberal Party. Their gut instinct is always vindictive, always seeking to punish those who are less well off. Blocking affordable housing for women and children escaping domestic violence is just extraordinary.

Now, on Monday, they put out, in their vehicle that's open to them on a daily basis, the position that they wanted to block increased help for single parents, for people on rental assistance, for JobSeeker recipients; the extra JobSeeker for those over 55. They put out there that they were going to block that. But of course that courage didn't last until lunchtime, and the Leader of the Opposition had to reverse the position that he'd put out in the morning on the front page of the Australian. It didn't last four hours. But what is constant is their ideological obsession with punishing the most vulnerable, and of course we saw that with robodebt. It's horrifying enough to think that the one lesson that they took from robodebt was that they didn't go hard enough. It is a pathology of cruelty from those opposite, who are determined to make things as bad as possible by standing in the way of legislation that will make a difference because they think that that will give them a political advantage.

Well, I say to them that we need to deal with the issue of housing supply. We need to build more houses. There is legislation that is before the parliament that will enable just that to happen, and it should be passed by the Senate.