Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing and Homelessness. How will the Albanese Labor government's tax cuts help tradies build the homes Australia needs, and what is standing in the way of the government's broad housing agenda?

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

I do want to thank the member for Macnamara. He understands how important our tradies are to build the homes that we need under our broad housing agenda. He's also been very supportive of developments—particularly around Melbourne, in Victoria—that will get more people into a home sooner.

Our hardworking tradies do deserve a tax cut, and thanks to the Labor government they'll be getting a tax cut on 1 July, which means that they will be able to keep more of what they earn. But we're also supporting more Australians to start their careers in construction. Last year alone we had 24,200 students enrolled in the construction sector through Labor's fee-free TAFE, adding to the 240,000 people that were already training in the construction sector. We've added, of course, thanks to the work of the Minister for Skills and Training over here, a further 300,000 fee-free TAFE places from 2024 to 2026 in priority areas that include construction, because we understand how important that is. So we're investing in our tradies through training Australians and bringing in skilled workers.

We need these investments so that we can build the homes that Australians need. We have committed now more than $25 billion over the next decade for additional investments in housing. Unlike those opposite, we're working closely with all levels of government to achieve our ambitious 1.2 million homes target. We're supporting the states and territories through the $3 billion New Homes Bonus. We're supporting them with a $500 million housing support program that the minister for infrastructure and I will be announcing in the coming weeks and through, of course, the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, which will fund and build 30,000 social and affordable homes over the next decade. There is, of course, the Housing Accord, with a further 10,000 homes to be matched by states and territories.

There are obstacles to what we are trying to achieve in housing. There are obstacles, and sadly they sit over there. They keep voting against more housing for Australians. Particularly, they voted against the Housing Australia Future Fund. The Greens over there did hold it up for a further six months. What I would say to those opposite is we now have Help to Buy going into the Senate, and those opposite know that this is targeted at supply, with a 40 per cent equity scheme, and those opposite should be supporting it. They can't go out and say we have housing challenges and continue to come in here and vote against measures that will add to supply. They continually come in here and they continually vote against it.

But they need to think about the people. They need to think about people like M-R, who I met on Friday when I was in Prahran and we opened 434 new social homes with the Victorian government. M-R said how much social housing has changed her life. We want to do more of this for people like M-R, and those opposite should be supporting it, not voting against it.