Sam Lim (Tangney, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing. How is the Albanese Labor government's plan to build 1.2 million homes helping Australians with housing costs? What is standing in the way?

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

I want to thank the fantastic member for Tangney for his question. He's just a brilliant representative for his community. The Albanese government has the boldest and most ambitious housing agenda that the Commonwealth has had for decades—a landmark $32 billion to help Australians manage this huge problem in our lives. We're helping Australians to build, build, build; we're helping to get a better deal for renters; and we're helping more Australians to realise the dream of homeownership.

As the member suggested, building more homes is at the very centre of our agenda because more homes means more affordable housing for Australians, and all of us in this chamber know that there are a lot of people in our communities doing it tough. All of us in this chamber have met families who are moving their kids from rental to rental, some of them having to disrupt the school year while they do it. We've got working families with mortgages who are really feeling the pressure, and a whole generation of young people out there who are increasingly saying to us that they feel that homeownership is out of reach for them permanently. It's not good for them and it's not good for the country.

When we came to office 2½ years ago, on housing, the cupboard was absolutely bare. There was a lack of Commonwealth ambition, there was a lack of Commonwealth action and, for most of that time, there was a lack of a Commonwealth housing minister. So the Albanese government stepped strongly into that void and, through our Prime Minister, negotiated an ambitious target of building 1.2 million homes over five years.

We're working with the states and territories to make it easier to build homes; we're funding infrastructure to unlock greenfield sites; we're training more tradies to build those homes, with more than 35,000 construction related courses being taken up through fee-free TAFE; we've expanded homeownership opportunities, with more than 130,000 Australians helped into homeownership since we've been in office; and we're supporting the construction of more social and affordable homes. Speaker, you might have missed this one when we announced the first round of the Housing Australia Future Fund: in round 1 alone, we will build more social and affordable homes than the coalition did in their entire decade in office.

This is a problem 30 years in the making. It's not going to get solved overnight. But what you have here in Canberra is a government with fierce resolve. We are throwing everything we can at this problem, and we're making real progress in the face of very significant opposition—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

which, no doubt, you can hear coming from them right now, Speaker.

There's going to be a real choice at the next election when it comes to housing, with an opposition whose nasty negativity and reckless arrogance has probably affected housing policy as much as any issue facing the country. We're in the middle of a massive transformation program here, helping Australians build, rent and buy. All that is going to be at risk if the member opposite becomes the leader of our country.