Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

():  I thank the wonderful member for Macquarie for her important question. Housing is a big focus of this Labor government, and it was an area where much welcome and meaningful progress was made at the Economic Reform Roundtable last week. I pay tribute to the Minister for Housing again for the work that went into that and the work that has followed that as well, because the housing challenge was ignored in a wasted decade of missed opportunities and messed-up priorities under our predecessors, where they racked up mountains of debt and deficits and still made no meaningful investments in addressing this housing challenge.

We're working very hard to turn that around. We've seen some progress, and that's welcome, but we know that there is much more for us to do to hit our ambitious targets. But just today the Reserve Bank released their meeting minutes from August, which said this:

Dwelling investment was showing clear signs of strengthening.

As the PM said a moment ago, there are a number of ways that we are seeing this progress. Building approvals are up almost 30 per cent compared to a year ago. When we came to office, they were going backwards by 20 per cent. Dwelling commencements are up 17.3 per cent in annual terms. They were falling 28.5 per cent when we came to office—the biggest fall in two decades, under those opposite. Dwelling investment is now growing at 5.6 per cent. It was going backwards by 5.1 per cent when we came to office. Importantly the key driver was investment in new builds, which rose 6.3 per cent, compared to falling 8.4 per cent when we came to office. Cost growth in construction has also moderated substantially. That part of the CPI grew 0.4 per cent through the year. It was growing 19.4 per cent when we came to office.

So we're investing more in this challenge than any government in the nation's history. We've added to that plan in the past couple of days. We are blitzing the approvals backlog. We are building more homes. We are pausing and streamlining the National Construction Code. We are fast-tracking assessment of more than 26,000 homes. Today we've announced that we are also accelerating our reforms of national environment laws. We will introduce legislation here before the end of the year to deliver this. The reform roundtable has provided important consensus and important momentum around these next steps. Blitzing the backlog, pausing the code and streamlining environmental assessments will all help to clean up the mess that was left to us by those opposite. When it came to housing, they had a wasted decade of missed opportunity and warped priorities. We are turning that around. We're seeing some progress. We know we've got more to do.

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