Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Parramatta. The Prime Minister made it clear before the election that new policies and new initiatives that would improve housing affordability would be a central plank of a new Rudd Labor government’s agenda, and Tuesday night’s budget delivers on those commitments. It delivers $2.2 billion worth of new investment in affordable housing for working families and individuals. It is the first budget in 12 years to respond to community concerns about failing housing affordability.

In fact, the former government cared so little about the housing needs of Australians that they did not even have a housing minister. I am very pleased that they now have a shadow housing minister and I was looking forward to reading her press release yesterday. I have enjoyed her previous press releases very much. I was wondering about the tack that she might take. I was wondering whether she would try and attack us on not doing enough for first home buyers. Well, no. It would be very difficult to do that because our $1.2 billion first home saver accounts would make that a difficult line to run. Our first home saver accounts help young Australians save a bigger deposit for their first home by making a government contribution of 17 per cent for the first $5,000 that young Australians put into these accounts each year, taxing them at a special low 15 per cent tax rate and making withdrawals tax free when they are taken out to build or buy a first home. It would be pretty difficult to criticise the greatest revolution in savings culture in Australia since compulsory superannuation reform. This is a reform that will see $6½ billion saved in its first four years of operation, a reform that will see average income earners putting aside 10 per cent of their incomes able to save around $88,000 in five years towards a deposit for their first home.

So she is not able to criticise our efforts for first home buyers. I was wondering whether she would have a go at us about rental properties or affordable homes to buy. That would also be very difficult, because we have our National Rental Affordability Scheme to build 50,000 new affordable rental properties and, if they are needed, another 50,000 affordable rental properties that will be rented out at 80 per cent of market values for low- and moderate-income earners, providing a source of growth funding for community housing, delivering lower rents for the people who need them most and, for the first time in Australia, making investment at the more affordable end of the rental market attractive to institutional investors.

What about homeownership? We have a $512 million fund—half a billion dollars—to bring down the cost of new homes to buy, particularly at the entry level of the market. So the shadow minister is not able to criticise us on first home buyers, on affordable rental market or on houses to buy. The shadow minister took an even more courageous path. The press release was entitled ‘Labor budget disregards public housing’. That is very, very brave from the former government that cut $3.1 billion out of public housing, that cut housing in real terms by 30 per cent and that presided over a public housing system that had 20,000 fewer homes in it when they left office compared to when they went into office—very brave indeed.

The shadow minister went on to say that it was a critical component of the overall housing supply chain. I think that every person on this side would agree with that—but then we are not the ones that cut $3.1 billion out of public housing. She called it ‘the part of the system under most stress’. Well, it is no wonder it was under most stress, having had $3.1 billion cut from it.

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