Madonna Jarrett (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I agree with the opposition: we are in a housing crisis. That is a fact. But for the opposition to think that this started in 2022 is simply delusional. This has been bubbling along for decades. There's no doubt that we're in a critical time in our nation's history, where we need all levels of government working together to build the homes we need for this generation and the next.

Housing is a human right. It is something I have said in this chamber many, many times. People are working hard. They're doing everything right, yet they still can't afford a place to call home. Young people are outbidding each other for rental properties. Families with kids who would absolutely have owned their own home a generation ago cannot get a foothold in the market. We hear it from parents who cannot give their kids the stability that they had as kids, and we hear it from renters that prices are going up. We see women in my electorate in Brisbane who are fleeing domestic violence or unworkable domestic situations, left stranded, couch surfing and car sleeping. And, of course, we see a rise in homelessness.

No matter what your situation is, having a roof over your head fundamentally changes your life's trajectory. For a long time, the Commonwealth government had tapped out on our national housing challenge, leaving most of the hard work up to the states. I'll say it again, as the member for Moreton said: for the nine years the coalition was last in power they didn't even have a housing minister, and they built just 373 social and affordable homes over that entire nine year period.

Now, this crisis wasn't created overnight, and it won't be fixed overnight. Our government understands this, and that's why we are throwing everything at it. We are acting, contrary to what the member for McPherson said. We're not sitting on the sidelines. What we're doing is implementing the single biggest housing build since the Second World War. That's full of ambition; it's not a lack of ambition, as said by the member for McPherson. Our $43 billion agenda is focused on three things: backing first home buyers, building more homes and making it better and easier to rent. We've completed over 5,000 social and affordable homes and have 25,000 more in construction and planning. This includes 80 social and affordable homes in Lutwyche and Windsor alone.

These programs are helping people right across the country like Karen, who lives in my electorate. Karen is in her 60s. She fled domestic violence seven or so years ago. She lived in shared accommodation, and she now has a home that she can call her own. She can decorate it the way she wants, she can leave the dishes till tomorrow and she can sit on her balcony and listen to music whenever she wants. She finally gets to live her life, her way.

Since Labor was elected over 180,000 Australians have bought their first home with the five per cent deposit including almost 2,100 in Brisbane. I ask the member for McPherson, again, to ask them if they think this is a bad policy. More than one million households have been supported, with our 50 per cent increase in rent assistance, and this has helped almost 9,200 recipients in Brisbane alone. We're seeing a real turnaround in home building, with almost half a million homes being built since we came to office and new housing commencements up 17 per cent. But we know the job's not done, and in this term we will continue to do more. We will continue to build more homes, continuing on the path of building 55,000 social and affordable homes as well as building 100,000 homes for first home buyers, excluding investors. And we're working towards a bold aspiration for Australia to build 1.2 million homes in five years.

We're about making it better to rent, helping thousands more rental homes get built and continuing to lift rental standards through our work with the states, implementing Help to Buy, our first national shared equity scheme, and delivering our five per cent deposit guarantee to every first home buyer. We need to keep building, we need to make it easier to build and we need to make it quicker to build. I want to say to the people of Brisbane: this Labor government has your back. We will do everything we can to tackle the housing challenges you are facing, but to make a difference we all have to work together. It's going to take all levels of government—state, federal and local—to sort through getting houses built more quickly. We need to think innovatively about how we build more homes. We owe it to the next generation to continue to do what we can to make homes available for people.

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