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

Firstly, I don't accept that the former government did enough on housing, as implied by Senator Bragg's question there. I don't think you did enough on new housing. I don't think you did enough on working with states and territories. I don't think you did enough with social housing, with affordable housing or with making sure that the homelessness agreement was funded or indexed properly. You didn't do any of those things. Under the leadership of Minister Collins, we have been addressing those things one by one. She's been doing an incredible job.

We agree that we need to build more houses. We do. We had this long exchange in estimates, which I enjoyed immensely, around housing. We were clear. We want to see more dwellings built. We want to remove some of the barriers that are preventing housing construction in this country. In particular, we are working with states, territories and councils about some of the planning barriers that exist that are not allowing housing to be built as quickly as we would like. We could go through all of the investments that we have made in other areas of housing. It's not just new housing to allow for first-home ownership but it's also what we do at the social and affordable end. It's the Social Housing Accelerator. It's the Housing Australia Future Fund, which will get programs out as soon as it's worked through them, but there is more to be done. We're not pretending that there isn't. There is enormous pressure in the housing market. We want to make sure that we are building more. We've got our target that will kick in on 1 July, and we will work with states and territories to meet that target and make sure that the Commonwealth is doing everything it can to increase the supply of housing in this country.