Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. It's a pity that the Greens political party have chosen to make themselves irrelevant to the debate. By refusing to participate—just like the coalition do—on these issues, they can take no responsibility for anything that this government does. We will not be held back by a 'no-alition' of the Liberal Party and the Greens political party saying 'no' to public housing.

What we have done is work with states and territories on the issue of housing supply because, yes, I understand that renters are doing it tough. Yes, I want to do things about that. Yes, that's why we have a renters' rights agreement we're working through with states and territories. What we are not doing is destroying supply while we do it, because the key to fixing housing is supply. If we did what those opposite want us to do, there will be less supply of housing going forward, and that is what they don't seem to comprehend. The fact is that those opposite have prioritised protesting, they have prioritised building up a profile, and they have prioritised politics rather than prioritising building public housing, which is why they voted in the Senate to block the bill by deferring it. At least those opposite in the Liberal Party don't pretend. They would have the guts to vote against public housing.

I say to the Greens, for deferring this legislation yet again: they should have had the guts, as I said to the leader of the Greens this morning, to vote against it, to say that you're against 30,000 additional social housing units, including housing for women and children escaping domestic violence, including housing for veterans, and including housing for those in Indigenous communities. There are a range of things open to the government to do, policy-wise. We don't need a Senate which has decided to block everything. We will take up those options. We certainly did on Saturday in announcing $2 billion of public housing going forward. In return for that, the states and territories have agreed on planning reform. They want new zoning. And I say the challenge is that those opposite oppose every new zoning, because they have never seen a medium-density development that they supported. In my area of the Inner West Council, they voted against every affordable housing development that has occurred. So don't come in here and say you care about public housing, just vote— (Time expired)

See this speech in context