Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing and Minister for Homelessness. How is the Albanese Labor government helping Australians with the housing pressures they face, and is there anything standing in the way of further support?

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Adelaide for his question, and this is a problem that I know he cares about very deeply, as I do and as my colleagues behind me do. Australia is in a housing crisis which has been a generation in the making, and this is a problem that is, today, affecting the lives of millions of people around our country. Why do we have a housing crisis? Because, over a period of decades, Australia has not been building enough homes. This is partly a failure of markets, but it's partly, too, a failure of governments. What we've seen, really since the postwar period, is the Commonwealth government work further and further back from this problem. If I can give you an example: in the preceding decade before Labor came to office, we saw the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments—for the majority of that period of coalition government, there was no Commonwealth housing minister. There was no person in the Australian government responsible for this problem.

Unsurprisingly, this has changed under our government. Today, our country is led by a prime minister whose entire life trajectory was changed by his access to affordable housing in his childhood, and we have a $32 billion plan which is targeted at helping Australians manage these issues. Part of that plan is to build, build, build. We want to build 1.2 million homes, working with states, over a five-year period.

We've got to do more to help renters in our country, and that's why you've seen our government make two very large increases to Commonwealth rent assistance and work with the states to improve renters' rights, and that's why we are making such an effort to help more Australians get into homeownership.

I'm asked about whether there are any challenges to progress, and, unsurprisingly, there are really serious challenges to progress. We don't just have a broken housing market in this country; we have broken housing politics. What we have seen in the time that our government has been in power, in our successive attempts to make legislative change to address this crisis, is that the Greens on the crossbench and the Liberals that sit opposite me have teamed up in this incredibly dysfunctional alliance to try to stop us addressing this important issue for Australians.

We have two bills that are sitting in the Senate at the moment, blocked by these two political parties, which will help us resolve this crisis for Australians. One of them will help us build more rentals. Why would anyone in this country be opposed to the building of more rentals? One of the pieces of the bill will help us encourage more low- and middle-income Australians into homeownership. This is a bill being opposed by political parties in this parliament. I'd say to those who are gathered in the chamber here: all of our constituents are affected by this problem. We need to come into this parliament and do our jobs, and that means coming into the parliament and working with our government to help Australians address this significant problem in their lives.