Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Pratt for her question and her interest in the issue of housing, particularly as it relates to her home state of Western Australia. I thank her for her ongoing support for the Housing Australia Future Fund, which is now set to pass through parliament this week.

A government senator: Hear, hear!

Yes—hear, hear! This fund will create an ongoing pipeline to help build social and affordable homes right across the country not just for this term of government but into perpetuity, and it's supported by the broad and ambitious Albanese government housing reform agenda. We've heard from the experts how these measures will help, but the most important feedback has been from people whose lives have been changed by safe and secure housing—people like Sean and Lisa, who met with the minister for housing recently. Sean had been needing surgery, but doctors couldn't operate while he had nowhere secure to be discharged too. Lisa told us that because they finally had a place to call home—in social housing, like the homes this fund will deliver—Sean could finally access the medical care he needed.

Access to housing changes lives, and the Housing Australia Future Fund will change the lives of countless Australians. That is what our work in this place is all about, and it is what the Albanese government is working for each and every day.