Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. In five years, rents have increased by 55 per cent and house prices by 49 per cent. The income a renter needs to buy a median priced house in a capital city is $197,000, yet the housing minister says Labor wants house prices to keep rising. Will Labor stop giving property investors with multiple properties big tax handouts that turbocharge house prices and deny renters the chance to buy a home and instead finally phase out negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. Indeed, fixing the affordable housing shortage is a big challenge for Australia. We have a plan that is focused on supply, because that is the key, whether you want to be a homeowner, or you are a renter or someone in social and affordable housing. That's why our $32 billion Homes for Australia plan is worthy of the support of everyone in this parliament—I note that the crossbenchers eventually, reluctantly, got there. They crab-walked their way to vote for some of the plans that were put forward.

In the last sitting week of December, we passed our build-to-rent incentives that are so important for private renters in Australia, to make a major difference. Those opposite here are still opposed to it. They say, 'Tax cuts for corporates.' This is the same mob that wants every single person who has any vague connection with a business to have a free lunch for themselves and their mates. They don't regard $10 billion for three months for their mates as something that's largesse, but they are opposed to funding for social and public housing. They are opposed to more investment in private rentals and they are opposed to our shared equity scheme that will make a difference as well. The model has been successful in Western Australia.

We are getting on with the job of building 1.2 million homes. Indeed, there are other things we are doing as well. We're training more tradies, with more apprenticeships, 20,000 fee-free TAFE places in construction and the $10,000 apprenticeship incentives that I announced at the National Press Club—something unfamiliar to most of those opposite—just before Australia Day. There's the local infrastructure announcements that we have made—two rounds of local infrastructure announcements facilitating the building of new homes, whether that be through connecting electricity, connecting water or making sure that any impediments to more housing supply are removed. Our social housing policy will lead to 55,000 homes being built. We have also provided assistance in the form of increased rent assistance in back-to-back budgets, now more than 45 per cent higher than at the election, in addition to helping 200,000 people into their first home sooner.