Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great pleasure to have the opportunity to rise in the chamber this afternoon to defend the government's HomeBuilder program. It's always pleasing, when I sit here and listen to the Labor members opposite, to remind myself how little they have learnt from their failures of the past. They keep going back to this failed narrative that shows how out of touch they are with Australian families and Australian tradies. They just fall back into their narrative of class warfare—the member for Jagajaga and the member for Oxley went there in a flash. Let's hope that the member for Jagajaga and the member for Oxley are in charge of the opposition's policies at the next election, because, if they keep relying on this class warfare nonsense, they will continue to be completely out of touch with the tradies and the families of this nation, who this government is supporting with a program like this. It's the same class warfare strategy that led them to the last election with a policy of introducing $31 billion in new housing taxes. What was that going to mean for the tradies and for the jobs in the construction industry of Australia? The Master Builders Association found that Labor's policies at the last election would have led to 42,000 fewer new dwellings, 32,000 fewer full-time jobs and an $11.8 billion drop in building activity. That is Labor's record. We, as a government, are about building and creating jobs. They are about stopping that building, tearing it down and taxing construction industry jobs out of existence. Instead, we have created the HomeBuilder program to provide a tax-free grant of $25,000 to build a new home or substantially renovate.

The HomeBuilder program will support rather than destroy jobs. It will support 140,000 direct jobs and another one million related jobs in residential construction. Just to demonstrate how in touch with the Australian people this program is, we have already had over 20,000 suburban families registering for the program as the states start signing up and rolling it out, including over 5,408 families in our home state of Queensland. The member for Oxley was just up on his feet, deriding the program and saying it was only for the rich. Well, here we have it: he's ignoring the 5,408 families of Queensland who are already signed up and are just waiting on the Queensland state Labor government to help us administer this program.

Mr Thompson interjecting—

He could indeed. I'll take the member for Herbert's interjection. The member for Oxley could just call his brother, the state Treasurer, and get things moving for those 5,408 families, but, instead, he sits here and plays class warfare. This is a thought out, targeted program that recognises the unique challenges that the construction industry is facing post COVID and the real possibility of the construction pipeline drying up. The HomeBuilder program will prevent that.

It's important to have these kinds of thought out, targeted programs, because we know what happens when you don't. When you have a program that isn't thought out, that is rushed in and that isn't targeted, you end up with programs like the pink batts program that the Labor members opposite rolled out. What does that do? It doesn't create jobs. In fact, their rollout, which cost over $2 billion, resulted in over 220 house fires, 70,000 repairs and—most tragic of all—four deaths, because they didn't take the time to think out and properly target their program. Over $1 billion has been spent just to rectify the problems that the Labor members created. So we won't take any lectures from the Labor members opposite as we roll out these programs. We will make sure that we implement programs which are, indeed, thought out and targeted and have a specific aim. And, in this case, it is ensuring that there is a considered pipeline of work for the construction industry to undertake over the next six months.

As a government, we are creating jobs and we are building. We won't entertain the objections from the Labor members, who simply want to tear things down and go back to the class warfare and rhetoric of the last election, which served them so poorly. This government will continue to implement the HomeBuilder program, create jobs and support Australian families.

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