Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Sharma is being exceedingly selective in the data he chooses to critique the government's answers on when it comes to housing commencements. I think the senator reflected on their so-called height of dwelling commencements. They had to go back as far as 2016 or 2017, I think, to find their peak of housing commencements. What we know is that in fact on the last government's watch, not due to COVID but due to their inaction and their lack of a housing agenda, between 2017 and 2022, up until the COVID stimulus started in about 2021, housing commencements absolutely collapsed in Australia relative to the previous climb and demand. They absolutely collapsed. Then, as we know, we had stimulus packages that saw, yes, a high level of housing commencements but absolutely without the prerequisite work done inside our economy to enable our economy to keep up with that elevation in demand. It is little wonder that our housing market became so tight as a result of that. It absolutely highlights why our nation needs the kind of housing agenda that we as a government have put forward.

When you look, for example, at new and other residential commencements back in June 2018, they were up at some 30,000 new houses, but then they collapsed by some 5,000 commencements. That is new houses themselves. New and other residentials collapsed from 30,000 down to 15,000 in about two years under the last government's watch. Under COVID, they started to try and rebuild that. They stimulated the economy, but they left us very, very ill prepared to do anything to actually be able to maximise the use of that stimulus. As a result, we have seen massive delays in housing construction such that we are just now beginning to see in some instances completion of houses that go right back to their COVID stimulus program.

We are doing the work in the development of our workforce, building materials, planning strategies, work with state governments and, in our Commonwealth housing procurement and stimulus programs, social housing affordability to unlock housing in our nation so that we can create more housing stock and a better future for all Australians. We see that the value of work done—seasonally adjusted chain volume measures, for example—under the last government absolutely collapsed, whereas now we are working towards growing alteration additions to residential buildings, new residential buildings, non-residential buildings and the total value of work done.

We have seen a small dip in new residential building in the last quarter, but I don't think that is any surprise when it comes to what we know has been a constrained labour supply.