Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Monash for her question, and, indeed, I hope that she writes to the 1,358 members of her electorate who've benefited from the five per cent home deposits. I hope she writes to them and says that, somehow, it's inappropriate that you're buying your own home and that what you should have done was just stay paying off someone else's mortgage rather than paying off your own mortgage, because that is what the member for Monash is suggesting.

But she raises housing policy under this government that I'm proud to lead with a housing minister who's doing an extraordinary job supporting increases in social housing and increased build-to-rent schemes for private rentals as well as increased homeownership across the board. In August, indeed, the Leader of the Opposition claimed about this policy:

… today Labor announced a revised Morrison government policy which we developed to help Australians get into their first home with a smaller deposit.

So it was their policy that they tried to claim, then they're against it. Now they're against the 1,358 Australians who have benefited from this in just that one electorate. But we know that there is a comparison, of course, because we heard it yesterday from the member for Wright. The member for Wright said—and he backed it up today, saying it exactly when the Minister for Housing was making her contribution in this chamber—that the reason why there was no housing minister under the former coalition government was that it wasn't needed. Apparently, up to 2022, everything was hunky-dory.

See this speech in context