Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Calwell for his question. I know he's incredibly proud that, to date, 2,360 people in his local community have got the opportunity to get into their first home with the backing of the Albanese government. I know that he can't wait to get back to Greenvale and to Broadmeadows and talk to his community about the landmark expansion that we are making of this program, with five per cent deposits for every single first home buyer across this country. The days of a 20 per cent deposit for a first home are gone, and we're going to be very proud to deliver this on 1 October.

It's been a really important two weeks for us on housing, as you've seen our government build on that $43 billion agenda that we've got in place. We're focused on three things: building more homes, making it better to rent and getting more Australians into homeownership. And of course, Speaker, you've heard me talk about the real progress we're making on this agenda for Australians. Half a million homes have been built since we came to office. Year on year, housing approvals are up 30 per cent in our country. In less than four years we've got 28,000 social and affordable homes in planning or construction, with 4,000 social and affordable homes completed. Remember, we're comparing ourselves to nine years where the coalition built 373 homes around this country—absolutely disgraceful!

Now, on top of that, a million households around the country are benefiting from almost a 50 per cent increase to Commonwealth rent assistance. And, of course, as I've mentioned to the parliament every single day this week, 180,000 Australians have already got into their first home with the backing of our government.

We know there's more work to do. That's why, just in the past week, we've announced this landmark expansion to the five per cent deposit program on 1 October and, of course, more work to build more homes more quickly through the immediate actions that we're taking out of the Economic Reform Roundtable. Just to refresh the parliament's memory, that includes the pausing and streamlining of the National Construction Code and the fast-tracking of environmental consideration of more than 26,000 homes.

There's a really clear contrast to be seen here. For the last two weeks, our government has spent its time building more homes and expanding pathways to homeownership, and those opposite have spent that fortnight in a complete, chaotic mess. They've spent their time not talking about real policies that actually exist but making up scare campaigns about housing taxes that don't exist. They've spent their time in the Senate not trying to build more homes but trying to stop the construction of 80,000 new rental homes. On the five per cent deposit program, on Monday, the Leader of the Opposition said that she loved it so much because it was her idea. At the same time in the Senate, the shadow minister was calling it bizarre and ridiculous. We're focused on housing, and we'll continue that work because that's what Australians elected us to do. (Time expired)

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