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

I share this with the parliament partly because I'd like you to understand the scale of the transformation that our government is undertaking. We are taking the Commonwealth from where they were for nine years—negligent bystanders for most of that time, without a housing minister—and we have now built the most bold and ambitious housing agenda a Commonwealth government has had since the postwar period. We have got a $43 billion agenda on the go here, with three big things we're doing: we're building more homes, we're making sure renters get a better deal and we're making sure Australians get into homeownership. The results are starting to speak for themselves: 180,000 people around the country have got into their first home with our government's backing. We've got a million households around the country which are getting an almost 50 per cent increase in Commonwealth rent assistance, and we've got homebuilding that's turning a corner.

I'm asked about risks. This is an important one because there is no question here: the single biggest risk to the progress we are making on housing is those opposite. It wasn't enough that they didn't do anything for a decade; for the last three years they've been coming to this parliament and being housing hypocrites, complaining about things not working and then stopping us building more homes desperately needed by Australians. What do the public think about this? A Fin Review poll published on the weekend shows that, of former coalition voters, more than 60 per cent do not support their approach to affordable housing. The voters can see right through them, and they've got an important question here: are we going to see three more years of housing hypocrisy, or are those opposite going to work with our government to get on with addressing this issue, key as it is to the lives of the people we represent?

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