Jana Stewart (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know. Thank you very much—senator of the people.

For a generation of Australians, homeownership feels too far away, and being a renter feels too insecure. Too many people spend their weekends in rental queues, lining up for a home they don't really want to live in. We've got a generation of Australians who are stuck in rent traps, who feel anger and despair that homeownership might not ever happen for them. We've got Australians making major life decisions—delaying having children or giving up precious time—to spend two hours a day in the car commuting to work, all because they can't get the stability of a place near where they want to live. We've also got the brilliant idea of Mr Dutton to force everyone back into the office and spend more time in their cars. We know that the state of housing in our country isn't good enough, and there's plenty that our government is doing about it. Every Australian deserves a healthy and affordable place to call home. The country's housing crisis has absolutely been decades in the making. We know that one of the main barriers to the construction of more homes is a lack of basic infrastructure. That's why the Albanese Labor government is building Australia's future and tackling the housing crisis caused by 10 years of coalition neglect. We're making it easier to buy, we're making it more affordable to rent and we're building more homes faster through our 'home of your own' plan and expanded Home Guarantee Scheme.

In stark contrast, and here are some of the comparisons, Senator Rennick and the coalition's version of prioritising the future of our children and younger Australians involves consistently voting against every measure that the Labor government has brought into this chamber. It might be worthwhile to spend a bit of time having a look at their voting record. They voted against increasing funding for public schools. They voted against increasing funding for early years educators. They voted against increasing housing affordability for younger Australians. They voted against increasing the youth allowance rate. They voted against removing children from immigration detention. What an absolute joke.

Labor's expanded Home Guarantee Scheme delivers lower deposits for first home buyers, which has helped twice as many people as under the former government. We're also supporting Australians with smaller mortgages under our Help to Buy shared-equity scheme. Our plan will help hundreds of thousands of first home buyers over the next few years, getting you into your own home sooner.

But we know the long-term fix for housing is to strike the right balance between the number of homes that we have and the number of homes that we need. That's why we're starting the largest house-build in Australia's history. We have an ambitious target of 1.2 million new homes, and we're delivering 55,000 social and affordable rental homes. We're directly investing in building new homes, just like we used to and just like your federal government should do. To unlock these homes in our cities, suburbs and regions, we're training more tradies, building more infrastructure and cutting red tape. We're also banning the foreign ownership of homes and bringing immigration down to sustainable levels. On top of that, we've delivered two budget surpluses, we've got inflation under control and we're helping Australians who are doing it tough.