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

I thank Senator Smith for that question and for her very good contribution just before question time, which really did sum up the state of this chamber and its approach to the housing challenges in this country.

As Senator Smith has outlined, we have made contributions to addressing the housing challenge in every single budget since we came to government. Let's not forget the responsibility of those opposite for some of the challenges in the housing market at the moment. After a decade of neglect—where I don't think they even had a housing minister for quite a long period of time, let alone anyone in cabinet representing it. Their single housing policy was one of Senator Bragg's favourites; I think it was 'raid your super'. His answer to every challenge across Australia at the moment is 'raid your super'. Let it rip! Let's just raid the super!

But the government have addressed it in every single budget. In our first budget, we committed to the Housing Australia Future Fund, which unfortunately was delayed in this chamber for a long period of time. We invested in Help to Buy, we put in a very significant package for Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory and, of course, we had a measure which supported pensioners looking to downsize—to deal with some of the financial impact of that.

In the second budget, we increased Commonwealth rent assistance, something that those opposite would chop. We committed another $100 million for remote housing in the Northern Territory. We've encouraged investment through measures for build-to-rent, and we boosted homelessness funding by $67.5 million.

In the third budget, our third opportunity to build on that program—that ambitious program of housing—we put more money into the Housing Support Program. We got a national agreement on social housing and homelessness. We funded new places in TAFE for construction. We got concessional finance for community housing providers and further investments in rent assistance and remote housing. (Time expired)