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

The reason I'm talking about the National Housing Accord is that the $3 billion New Homes Bonus, which the member asked me about, sits at the end of the National Housing Accord. We are in constant negotiation and discussion with the states. We've got a problem in our country that it's become too hard, too difficult, too expensive and too lengthy to get a home built, and the states are critically important to solving that problem and have more power over that, frankly, than the Commonwealth does. That's why they are such key partners of ours.

The $3 billion incentive the member asked me about sits, as she's mentioned, at the end of the accord targets, and of course the states are always keen to see that money flowing to them faster. But I would say to the member regarding the $43 billion package that sits across all our housing policies—whether it's building more homes, getting renters a better deal or getting more Australians into homeownership—that quite a deal of that money actually flows through the states. We had, as part of the original negotiation, $1.5 billion in infrastructure funding; much of that flowed to the states. Round 2 of the Housing Australia Future Fund completely went to the states. We've got $10 billion going to the states to deliver 100,000 homes, and $2 billion went to the states for social housing. So there's a really strong partnership there and quite a lot of money flowing through those states at the moment. (Time expired)

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