Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Lambie's contribution brought home the stark reality that too many Australians are experiencing at the moment—that is, a lack of housing; rising rates of homelessness—which we are trying to work with this chamber to fix. It is time for the nonsense around this issue to end. We've had weeks of the performative social media from the Greens. We've had months of the self-indulgent press conferences. The Greens, at some point, have got to realise that we are not in a school debating society here. We are talking about real people's lives and real solutions, to create the housing that so many Australians so desperately need, and today we have an opportunity to fix that. People are hurting.

It is time to debate legislation that will build 30,000 social and affordable homes across Australia. That's what this motion does. It seeks to bring on the debate on a bill that will help build tens of thousands of homes. I've listened to the Greens try to categorise this as being not enough, that it's the only thing being done about housing. That is just more nonsense and misrepresentation from the Greens. Not only will this fund build 30,000 new social and affordable homes in the first five years, the Greens want to vote against 4,000 homes for women and children fleeing domestic violence and older women at risk of homelessness. The Greens want to partner with the coalition to, as Senator Lambie is talking about, build homes for veterans.

That is what is at stake here. There's a lot more at stake here than a social media tile or a graphic or a video or whatever other self-fulfilling, self-indulgent social media thing. These are people's real lives. That is in addition to the $2 billion, that Labor is financing, being made available to support social and affordable rental homes. There is up to $575 million available for social and affordable rental homes and $350 million to build a further 10,000 affordable homes. We are pulling every possible lever open to government to build social and affordable homes that the Greens want to jump on Instagram and tell people they care about. We're doing every single one of these things.

It's still not enough for the Greens, because what they're interested in is milking public attention to build up their votes at the expense of people who desperately deserve housing. The Greens should be ashamed of themselves. They should be ashamed of leaving people living in tents so that they, the Greens, can have a social media feed. That is all that matters to the Greens—not the content, not the substance. That is all that actually matters.

Who is coming together today to oppose the biggest investment in public housing that we have seen in this country, in a decade, in addition to everything else? Who's coming together? We have a new coalition emerging between the Greens; Peter Dutton and the Liberal and National parties; and, it would appear, Pauline Hanson and One Nation. Well, give yourselves a pat on the back! What great company you're keeping in order to stop the development of public housing in this country. Oh, you don't want to be with the Greens?