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

Can I salute the influential role that the member for Reid plays in in the delivery of our cost-of-living assistance and also our housing policy. New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics today showed that headline and underlying inflation ticked up in July, but they were still well within the Reserve Bank's target band. This makes it the eighth month in a row that headline inflation and underlying inflation have come in either within or below the Reserve Bank's target range. Even though these numbers came in a little higher than market economists expected, they are a reminder that inflation has more than halved since we came to government. When we came to office, those opposite left us monthly inflation at 6.1 per cent and absolutely galloping. It's come down substantially under this government, and interest rates have come down three times as a consequence of that.

As I've said before—I think I said it during question time this week—and as the Reserve Bank governor said, we know that the monthly inflation figures can jump around a bit. They're less reliable than the quarterly figures. They don't compare the same basket of goods and services from month to month. In this case, the volatile and one-off factors include the timing of the energy rebates.

But underneath the headline figures today there were some very encouraging signs on housing. Rental growth was lower because of our boost to Commonwealth rent assistance. Rents rose 3.9 per cent in the year to July. That's still too high, but it would have been 5.1 per cent were it not for the changes that we are delivering to rent assistance. Construction costs grew 0.4 per cent in annual terms. They were growing 19.4 per cent when we came to office. Through our $43 billion Homes for Australia plan, we're investing more in this challenge than any government in the nation's history. We're blitzing the approvals backlog, building more homes, pausing and streamlining the code, fast-tracking assessment of more than 26,000 homes and bringing forward our five per cent deposits for first home buyers.

We now know, though, that, in the Senate, those opposite are going to try to disallow our build-to-rent reforms that the industry think will deliver 80,000 new homes. This beggars belief, but it's true to form. If they have their way in the Senate tonight, there'll be 80,000 fewer homes in a country that desperately needs them. They wasted a decade, and we're trying to make up for lost time. We put to the people at the election more homes and smaller deposits. Those opposite put fewer homes and higher prices. Their madness in the Senate shows that they have not learned a thing. They have not changed a bit. All they have is the same nasty negativity that Australians rejected in May, and that will cost our country tens of thousands of homes.

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