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

I welcome the opportunity to talk about Labor's comprehensive housing agenda and the first round of the Housing Australia Future Fund being complete, and those applications are being processed now. This is a very significant and important reform to have the Housing Australia Future Fund as an ongoing vehicle to invest in social and affordable housing, something that those opposite were allergic to when they were in government and that has left the state of social and affordable housing in this country in terrible need of additional investment because there was none. There was no interest in it.

We have established the Housing Australia Future Fund that was delayed in this place for well over a year as those opposite sought to frustrate and obstruct the government's housing agenda. But we were able to get that reform through and those programs were oversubscribed by interest in the first round from investors, from state and territory governments, from social and community service organisations that work in the front-line that see the need to invest, that see the need to create opportunity and accommodation for people in need of social and affordable housing. Plenty of people see the need for it, plenty of investors want to be part of it and now we will get those projects through.