Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing and Minister for Homelessness. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to help Australians with cost-of-living pressures around housing, and what is standing in the way?

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

I thank the fantastic member for Macarthur for his question. It gives me a great opportunity to update the House on Labor's bold and ambitious housing agenda, an agenda that comes after a wasted decade under those opposite. As the Prime Minister reminds us, it was a decade for most of which those opposite did not even have a housing minister. That's how tapped out of this problem they were.

The election of our government changed that attitude. We have a Commonwealth government stepping up, leading the country and working with the states to get better housing options for Australians. We are working to get the country building more homes. We are getting a better deal for renters. Homeownership is a critical part of that agenda. In your electorate, Speaker, and in mine there are low- and middle-income Australians who have been locked out of the housing market, key workers who need and deserve government help to get into a home—childcare workers, teachers, nurses and cleaners. Labor's Help to Buy Bill is part of the puzzle in addressing this.

I'm asked what stands in the way. What stands in the way is those opposite. They say no to everything. For every good thing our government is doing, there is nasty negativity and reckless opposition, and on housing it is no different. But the biggest hypocrites of all are the Greens. For everything our government has tried to do on housing this term—

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

Order! I invite the minister to withdraw that comment.

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

I will withdraw that if you like, absolutely. I withdraw. For everything our government has tried to do on housing this term, the Greens have worked in partnership with the opposition to block and delay. The net effect on housing of the Greens' presence in this parliament is thousands of Australians who have been denied a home and fewer homeowners. It is not a record that I would be particularly proud of.

They have a chance this week to redeem themselves by allowing our housing bills passage through the Senate, remembering that the Greens brought a scheme just like help to buy to their platform in the last election. We know that they support this scheme and the only reason that they have blocked and delayed homeownership for childcare workers and nurses is that, every time, the Greens choose politics over progress for Australians. It is time for this juvenile charade to come to an end.

The bill before the Senate will help tens of thousands of low-income people, like nurses and childcare workers, into homeownership, and the Greens must stop working with those opposite to deny these people those opportunities. Australians will remember the actions of the Greens this week on the housing bills. Do the Greens want to go into the election having blocked and delayed everything and having stood in the path of childcare workers owning their own homes? Are they anything more than an ineffective party of protest? We will soon find out. The ball is in their court.