Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is just an honour to hear that insightful reflection from the Liberal Party about how important someone's word is! I thought I'd reflect on someone's word in this chamber when they said:

… the tax system is screwing over young Australians. Instead, it favours well-off, established interests against those trying to get ahead. … In short: if you work hard to get ahead, you get hit hard; if you live off assets, you don't.

Now, that wasn't anyone on this side of the House that said that. It wasn't anyone on the crossbench either. It was the young shadow treasurer, Pauline Hanson's best friend—she's found a gold mine in Goldstein over there! The shadow treasurer said those exact words, because, once upon a time, there were Liberal Party members who used to actually listen to the needs of the constituents that they represent. But those days are long since over, and the Liberal Party have shown that, no matter what electoral punishments they continuously get, they are happy to go back to the well and ignore the interests of Australians. And then they get surprised when Australians ignore them at the ballot box.

On this side of the House, since coming into government in 2022, we have completely changed and transformed the way in which our housing sector is operating, and it's all been around giving more Australians the opportunity either to purchase a safe and secure home or to be able to access a safe and secure home when they need it. We've made sure that renters have a better deal, with long-term tenancies, via working with the states, and better conditions on those tenancies as well.

But let me remind this place of the journey—which the Liberal Party has opposed, at each and every single opportunity—to improve access for Australians to the housing market. As to our five per cent deposit scheme, which over 200,000 Australians have accessed to be able to get into the housing market and purchase their own home, the Liberal Party and the shadow minister for housing—Senator Bragg, from the other place—said that that was subsidies for billionaires. I'm not sure what billionaire he was talking to, and why they were using five per cent deposits, but certainly the 200,000 Australians who have accessed this, I think, would have a very different opinion: that these Australians are hardworking Australians who struggled to get the deposit to get into the housing market. But, once they had the opportunity to get a mortgage of their own, they could pay down that loan.

There's also the Help to Buy Scheme, a shared equity scheme, that, at every opportunity, those opposite decided to come up with the most ludicrous ways of criticising—saying that we'd be in your kitchen and all sorts of other absurd things—when, actually, the vast majority of people who are using that scheme are people who are either low- or middle-income earners who are getting into the housing market for the first time, or people who have separated. A lot of women who are single have used that scheme and have done so in order to give themselves safety and security and stability in their lives. We couldn't be prouder to help every single Australian to be able to get into the housing market and to find that stability and security of paying down their own mortgage instead of paying down someone else's.

But, of course, that is not all. Since coming into government, we have made the largest investment in social housing in decades. Now, those opposite didn't even have a housing or homelessness minister for most of the time they were in government, which showed just how low a priority it was for those opposite. I remember the former housing minister, Mr Sukkar, the former member for Deakin—who has been replaced by an outstanding member for Deakin, may I say—who said that social housing was just a matter for the states, and refused to invest a single dollar in social housing.

Well, we are building 55,000 social and affordable homes that are going to Australians who really need them, whether they be key workers, whether they be people who are escaping family or domestic violence, or whether they are just people who, through no fault of their own, need a safe place to go for a period of time. We are investing in making sure that there are those homes available. I've been touring the country looking at all of those sites, and it is so exciting. The quality of that housing is something that we can all be very proud of.

Finally, I want to mention the youth housing incentive that we are funding in this budget, because what that will do is make sure that young people who are in those difficult circumstances will be on an equal playing field and will be able to access those incredible social housing homes that we're building, along with the others around Australia, instead of being locked out. We care about housing, we're delivering housing and we're helping Australians buy their own home as well.

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