Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How will the government's Help to Buy Scheme legislation ensure more Australian families can buy a home, and what is standing in the way of getting this done?

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

I'm glad to get a question about policy from this side of the House. Our Help to Buy Scheme will help more families achieve the great Australian dream. It is a shared equity scheme that will assist some 40,000 families on low and moderate incomes buy a home with as little as a two per cent deposit. We know that programs like this have worked very effectively in Western Australia. We know that the former New South Wales coalition government introduced a similar scheme. In Victoria, they produced a similar scheme as well. It is all about getting people into homeownership. It is part of our comprehensive plan on housing.

What we saw earlier this year with our Housing Australia Future Fund was a 'noalition' of the Liberals, the Nationals, the Greens and One Nation all combine to defer a scheme that should have begun on 1 July, providing support for more investment in public housing. But they opposed it and they kept deferring it. They deferred it twice. Eventually, enough crossbenchers decided that they would support the program. But it was delayed. Those opposite held the line, to be fair. They were consistent. They are just against public housing, as they are against everything when it comes to the public—public transport, public health and public education. They are just against the public over there. We know that's their position. I would have thought maybe there was a chance that they were in favour of homeownership, but apparently not. The Senate has made a decision to defer consideration of the Help to Buy Scheme not for a month, not for two months, not for three months and not even for four months but for five months, from November right through to April. Once again, what we have is a coalition of people saying no. The same group that came together to oppose investment in social housing have come together to oppose support for homeownership.

We will continue to advocate for our comprehensive agenda when it comes to housing. It's a comprehensive agenda to increase the number of homes in Australia by 1.2 million and to have a plan for social housing but also to assist people into owning their own home. (Time expired)