Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The great Australian dream has traditionally been to own your own home. That is the dream of every young person who's just finishing school and who's starting work to get a deposit together and buy themselves a house. And there's no doubt that there is a housing crisis and a housing problem that we're facing, and this government is doing all it can to overcome that challenge. But that's not to say that this problem began in May 2022, when Labor came to this side of the House and formed government. This has been an ongoing issue for many years. I recall the debates mainly tailored around homelessness in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years and even in the Howard years. We know for a fact that traditionally, by the coalition side, it was to handball it to the states. I remember many questions being asked in this place by the then Labor opposition. I recall the answers from this side of the House from the coalition government of the time, wiping their hands clean of housing and saying, 'This is solely an issue for the states to combat.'

In my home state of South Australia, in 1993, when the Brown-Olsen Liberal government came to power, right through to 2002, when the Rann Labor government came to power, 10,000 public housing, houses and housing stock was sold off—10,000! You don't rip out a massive hole of 10,000 homes without creating some form of problem. I don't know what it was like in other states, but I can tell you that was the case.

As I said, there is no doubt there is a housing problem. All of us in this place, as we go doorknocking, speak to people in forums et cetera, know that it's harder for young people to buy a home. I also hear from young people themselves who apply for the rental properties with dozens of other people competing for that very same property. And it's not just young Australians. Families with kids are worried that, as rents go up, they may be forced to move at the whim of a landlord, and they feel bad that they can't give their child the stability they enjoyed as children.

On this side of the House, we understand profoundly how upsetting it is for families, as opposed to the others, who for nine wasted years only built 373 affordable homes over that entire period. During this term of parliament, they've continued to show that they don't understand what needs to be done. Only last week in the other place they tried to completely scrap the Commonwealth housing agenda. They tried to scrap five per cent deposits for first home buyers; they tried to scrap the Help to Buy program, helping the people who need it most; they also tried to scrap the social and affordable homes we're already delivering, thanks to the Housing Australia Future Fund.

We know that the long-term fix for housing is to build more homes. We know that we have to build more homes and we have to encourage everything from private enterprise to governments to absolutely build those homes. We on this side have an ambitious national target. We're determined, together with the states and the territories, to build 1.2 million new homes. That's the only way we can solve this housing crisis. We need more stock, and we need to work in partnership with all levels of government—local government and state governments—and the private sector to get those homes built.

In South Australia, a former colleague from this House, the Hon. Nick Champion, is their Minister for Housing and Urban Development, the Minister for Housing Infrastructure and also the Minister for Planning. Combining these portfolios under one minister makes perfect sense. We, the federal government, have been working very closely with the South Australian state government. In my electorate of Adelaide, I've been pleased to join the minister on a number of occasions to launch projects such as UnitingSA's Uniting on Second, in Renewal SA's Bowden Precinct, creating and providing more affordable homes.

More than half a million homes have been built nationwide since Labor were elected. We're delivering 55,000 social and affordable homes, thanks to programs like the HAFF that the opposition have tried to tear down. We have a plan to make it easier: lower deposits, through our five per cent deposit scheme; smaller mortgages for 40,000 Australians, through Help to Buy; and a $10 billion investment into 100,000 homes. (Time expired)

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