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

I thank the member for Cunningham for her question. We are so lucky to have her powerful voice representing regional Australia in our caucus, as are so many regional MPs behind me representing the Labor Party.

We're in the middle of a housing crisis that's been cooking for 40 years. The answer is: we've got to build, build, build. But to build we first need to approve. For so many housing projects that we see around the country, it takes much longer to get approval to build a home than it does to actually build one. This is one of the things that our government is working to change.

This is a really important day as we take a big step forward in reforming Australia's broken environmental laws. Australia's new environmental laws will reduce approval times for housing, in some cases from years down to weeks. A faster yes and a faster no will give home builders the certainty that they need.

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