Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister is of course 100 per cent correct. Housing affordability is a serious issue, and the way that you improve housing affordability is by increasing the supply of housing. What happens to the affordability of anything in a free market is a function of supply and demand. If you have stronger demand than available supply, prices go up; if you have stronger supply than demand, prices go down, and over time in a market things get back into balance.

The truth is that there are a whole range of things that we, with the states and territories, should be focusing on to improve housing affordability, but the premise of Senator Gallagher's question, as indicated in my primary answer, is false, and we reject it. She is trying to suggest that certain decisions have been made in relation to a process that has not reached a conclusion. So Senator Gallagher or any other Labor senator can keep jumping up and down every day— (Time expired)