Mary Doyle (Aston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fadden for the opportunity to speak on this very important matter. Housing is a life-defining challenge for so many Australians, and nowhere is that clearer than in my community of Aston. People are working hard and doing everything right, and they're still finding it hard to afford a place to call home. Young people are standing in long queues just to inspect rental properties. Families who a generation ago would have owned their own home now feel as if they're locked out of the market, and parents worry they can't give their kids the same stability they once had. I'm one of those parents, in fact. Renters are being hit with increases that are too high and too frequent. But this isn't a new problem—oh, no. It's a challenge that stretches back decades. It started under the Howard government, quite frankly, and for far too long it was left to the states, while the Commonwealth stepped back. Under the coalition for nearly a decade, from 2013 to 2022, the federal government was a negligent bystander. They tapped out of housing and didn't even have a housing minister until their very last term. They had no national target, no serious plan and, above all, no leadership.

Under the Albanese Labor government, that has changed. Under our government, the Commonwealth is back at the table, with an ambitious $45 billion housing plan focused on three things: building more homes, making it easier to buy and making life better for renters. And we are delivering. Firstly, we are building more homes. We've set a national target of 1.2 million new homes because we know the simple truth: the best way to make housing more affordable is to build more houses. Since we came to government, more than 570,000 homes have already been built across the country. New-homes starts are up, construction times are improving and construction cost inflation, once at a half-century high of 17 per cent under the coalition, has been brought down dramatically. We're cutting red tape, investing in infrastructure, training more tradies and working with states and territories to unlock supply in our cities, suburbs and regions. Through our social and affordable housing agenda, including the Housing Australia Future Fund, we've already completed more than 6,000 homes for Australians who need them most, with 55,000 more in the pipeline.

Compare that to the coalition, where just 373 social and affordable homes were delivered nationwide when they were in office. Even now, with three different leaders since they were in government, they're still standing in the way. They delayed the Housing Australia Future Fund, then they promised to scrap it. They tried to tear down the build-to-rent scheme, putting 80,000 rental homes at risk. They opposed Help to Buy, which is helping 40,000 low-income Australians into homeownership. And they even opposed one of the most practical, life-changing policies we've delivered: the five per cent deposit scheme.

In Aston, this important scheme matters. Right now, families and young people in our community are getting into their first homes with just a five per cent deposit, cutting years off the time it takes to save. It is life changing. It means no more lining up for rentals and no more uncertainty at the end of every lease. It means a place to call your own, somewhere you can raise a family, plant a garden, have a cat and a dog or a budgie, hang pictures on the wall and plan your future. Across Australia, more than 230,000 people have already been helped into homeownership through this program. That's 230,000 lives changed, yet the opposition call it a gimmick. They vote against it and now they want to rip it away.

The truth is the coalition have given up on homeownership. They stand in this place and claim they support homeownership, but the question is simple: How can they? How can they claim to support Australians getting into homes when they oppose every single measure that makes it possible? Labor has a plan. It's ambitious, it's comprehensive and it's already delivering real results for communities like mine in Melbourne's outer east.

We know this challenge won't be solved overnight, but we are making real progress building more homes, helping more Australians buy their own home and delivering a fairer housing system for the future. I'm proud to stand here today as a member of a government that is finally taking this challenge seriously and delivering on housing for all Australians.

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