Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is for the Minister for Housing and Minister for Homelessness. How is the Albanese Labor government making it easier for working Australians in my electorate and across the country to own a home? What might prevent that from happening?

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

I want to thank the member for Fraser for his question. The member for Fraser and I share a pretty simple belief. We want to live in a country where ordinary Australians can get the opportunity to own their own home. But he knows and I know that too many of our constituents spend their weekends in rental queues, dozens of people deep, looking at homes that they don't even really want to live in. We have a generation of low- and middle-income people who are stuck in rent traps, who feel anger and despair at the notion that homeownership feels out of reach.

Mr Sukkar interjecting—

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

The member for Deakin will cease interjecting.

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

All of us in this chamber have constituents who are making major life decisions—delaying children, spending two hours in a car every day getting to and from work—because they can't find the housing that they need. It's not good enough. That is why our government is so committed to making a difference to this problem. Right now, the parliament has the chance to do just that. Our Help to Buy legislation will back 40,000 childcare workers, teachers and apprentices into homeownership where they would otherwise have no chance of getting into the housing market.

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

The member for Deakin is going to cease interjecting.

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

There is genuinely no sound policy reason not to support this bill, but that's never stopped the 'noalition'—the Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens who are today standing in the path of this reform.

Honourable members interjecting—

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

Order! The minister will pause. I would like to hear from the Manager of Opposition Business.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The term is out of order and the minister should be asked to withdraw.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To the point of order: the earlier ruling that you made was based on parties being referred to by their correct titles. Therefore, you had objected to that term being used when it was a combination of the Liberal Party and the National Party. It's another thing altogether to use that term, where there's no protection under the standing orders, where a new alliance is formed between the Greens, the Liberal Party and the National Party.

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

The Leader of the House needs to state his point of order without excessive details. Whoever is interjecting can cease immediately as well. To assist the House, I will enable the minister not to use that term and just to refer back to the question without any titles. If she was referring to political parties I'd ask her, to assist the House, to assist me in addressing political parties by their correct titles.

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

I'm absolutely happy to do that. I would encourage those opposite, if they don't want to be called that, to stop teaming up with people of the crossbench to stand in the path of critical things that will help us address the housing issues in the minds of Australians. In some senses, I expect this ridiculous bloody-mindedness on this policy that we see from those opposite, because it was a decade of inaction of the part of their party which has in part brought us to where we are today on housing. But I do expect better of the Australian Greens party. The hypocrisy from the Greens is so outrageous that they actually bought a shared equity scheme, a similar policy, to the election in 2022. They are coming into the parliament and voting against their own policy, and they're holding to ransom the housing aspirations of 40,000 people who need and deserve the help of government.

Our party takes a very different view. Those 40,000 people—the childcare workers, the early career nurses, the aged care workers—are the reason that my colleagues and I get out of bed every morning. Those people are the reason that the member for Fraser and I decided to go into politics. I remind the parliament that this is not some abstract political debate here. The things we do in this chamber have real consequences for real people. Forty-thousand people can have their lives changed by this law, but those opposite and those on the crossbench stand in the path of progress. I would say about the Greens that they're good at making a very big noise about their concerns about housing progress, but, when it comes time to make a difference, they will choose politics every single time, and they deserve every day to be condemned for that stance.