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

In your previous question, Senator Roberts, you did acknowledge that one of the reasons that we have seen a spike in migration is that there has been a return to Australia of international students and workers—and tourists for that matter—since COVID, so it's no surprise that we have seen an increase in migration numbers, given there were at least a couple of years when people basically couldn't come to Australia, and there was always going to be a degree of catch-up in there. You ask what we are doing about housing, and again what I say is that this government has done more certainly than the last coalition government and probably more than any other Australian government to fix the issues that we do have around housing—and they are very real. We didn't see investment from the former coalition government in public housing for nearly 10 years, and we are fixing that. We're delivering the Housing Australia Future Fund, which, Senator Roberts, I remember you voted against last time. You cared so much about housing that you voted against a fund that was going to build more homes! We're also providing more money for social housing and rental assistance. (Time expired)