Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing and Minister for Homelessness. What does the passage of the Housing Australia Future Fund mean for Australians needing a safe and affordable place to call home?

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Wills for that question. I know that the member for Wills, like the Prime Minister and I, spent some of his early childhood in public housing. He knows how important public and social housing is. I know he fully appreciates just how momentous this is. Today is a day that will change housing in Australia. The Housing Australia Future Fund has now passed the parliament. The government has now delivered on its promise to the Australian people—a $10 billion fund to create a secure, ongoing pipeline of funding for social and affordable housing into the future.

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

Order, Member for Deakin!

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is the single biggest investment in affordable and social housing in more than a decade. It means more homes in every corner of this country—our cities, our regions, our towns; more homes for women and children impacted by family and domestic violence; more homes for older women at risk of homelessness; more homes for our veterans, who need a safe space to spend the night; and more homes for Australians needing an affordable place to call home. This is our government working for Australians, and we're going to keep working—working with our state and territory colleagues, working with the construction sector, working with the community housing providers and working with institutional investors to deliver on these homes. We know the largest community housing provider in New South Wales, St George Community Housing, have, for example, over 470 social and affordable homes lined up ready to go today, and they are not alone. Across the country, providers and states already have in place plans so that, when this fund actually passed the parliament, they could get on with building. We're ready to build more homes. Thanks to the Housing Australia Future Fund, there'll be funding for new social and affordable homes in perpetuity.

I'm proud that we've delivered on one part of our ambitious housing agenda. We also, of course, have our new national target to build 1.2 million homes across the country, with our $3 billion New Homes Bonus, our $500 million Housing Support Program, our $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator, our National Housing Accord, our boost to Commonwealth rent assistance, the additional $2 billion in financing for social and affordable housing, new incentives to boost the supply of rental housing, the $1.7 billion extension to the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, leadership on renters' rights, changes to the Home Guarantee Scheme and the introduction of the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. We've got a lot of work to do, we've done a lot and we're going to keep working hard every day so that more Australians have a safe, affordable place to call home.