Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I'll tell you what hasn't helped housing is the Commonwealth not having a policy on it for 10 years when they were in government. I'll tell you what hasn't helped the housing shortage is a migration system that was broken under Mr Dutton and has required fixing. I'll tell you what else hasn't helped housing and the housing shortage: the skills shortage that we have after years of failure to invest in vocational education and training, something we are also fixing. I'll also tell you what's not helping is those opposite continuously opposing every measure that we try to put in place to address housing supply, like the Housing Australia Future Fund, for example, where we get an ongoing stream of funding going into social and affordable housing, or some of our other initiatives, whether it be Help to Buy, Build to Rent. You are opposed to all of those.

We have an enormous amount of investment going into housing. We recognise that not enough has been done, particularly over the last decade, when the only answer to the housing shortage was to ransack your super in order to pay a deposit, which would have directly increased the cost of housing. We are getting on with the job. We are getting on with the job of building houses, whether they be social and affordable houses or getting people into home ownership or the work that national cabinet is doing around renters' rights—acknowledging a large part of the population are renting now.

We are doing everything we can, and I would say to Senator Bragg, if he is genuinely interested in housing beyond superannuation for housing, 'Work with us on this to increase supply, work with the states and territories, work with local government, to make sure that we're doing everything we can to increase housing supply in this country.'