Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How does the Housing Australia Future Fund work together with the Albanese Labor government's other housing actions to help more Australians build, rent or buy a home? Is there any opposition to this comprehensive approach?

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

I thank the member for Swan for her question and for her passionate support of dealing with housing issues, as a new member of our parliament who has had a real impact, representing those inner suburbs of Perth in Western Australia.

The HAFF is one of our key election commitments, and I am pleased that it will pass the parliament. It does mean 30,000 additional social and affordable homes, but importantly as well it means 4,000 of those homes will be provided for women and children escaping domestic violence. There is a great need. Too many women and their kids spend a night in the car, in the park, in someone else's home, swapping from home to home, as they struggle to escape domestic violence, which remains a scourge in this country, tragically. This will make a difference, as will the increased support for veterans as a result of this. Tonight I'll speak at the Veterans Employment Awards, and I'm sure that they would recognise the positive impact that this legislation will have. It will also help to fix up housing in the remote and regional communities of Indigenous Australians.

So this is very, very positive. It's part of the $8 billion dollar commitment of new investment that we have made, the single biggest investment in housing for more than a decade. It is part of our comprehensive plan, the new national target of 1.2 million homes with the $3 billion New Homes Bonus for states and territories, the $2 billion of the Social Housing Accelerator and the better deal for renters, including the increase in rent assistance.

We're already seeing some of those planning changes come through. In the ACT this week there was a very positive announcement to enable dual occupancy to occur on land in the inner suburbs which is developed and which has infrastructure, enabling someone to build another dwelling on their land in order to house a relative or, indeed, to rent it out in order to increase housing supply. I congratulate the ACT government and Andrew Barr on doing that.

This week we committed an additional $1 billion in funding to the National Housing Infrastructure Facility. There will be more homes for more Australians who need them. This is part of our plan, Working for Australia. It is extraordinary that the coalition and their friends in One Nation continue to oppose this legislation in the Senate. But I'm pleased that enough people have seen common sense and there will be majority support for this program. (Time expired)