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

I thank the member for Gorton for her fantastic question. She's one of our brilliant incoming class of 2025, one of many in our caucus who speak so powerfully for the younger generations of our country who are being treated so unfairly by our broken housing system. The member for Gorton and I share a really simple belief, and that is that everyone in our country should have a safe place to call home. But, for far too many Australians, their housing dream keeps slipping further and further away. Whether it's the dream of buying their own home, renting somewhere near where they work or getting into much needed social and affordable housing, the system is not working for them.

As the Prime Minister said before, our housing system in this country is broken. It is cooked. It is hurting people, and that is why our government is standing up and doing something about it. That is why our government is levelling the playing field for first home buyers and building on the work that we have done to get a quarter of a million Australians the keys to their own home, and we're damn proud to have done it. It's why we're committing another $2 billion of investment in last-mile infrastructure to unlock another 65,000 homes. That builds on $4.3 billion that we'd already committed to that endeavour. It's why our government is so proud to be delivering 55,000 social and affordable homes around the country. We've just ticked over 7,000 of them being completed.

I'm asked about alternatives, and I want to speak about the approach of those opposite. For nine long years, this group of charlatans sat on the government benches—for most of that time, without a housing minister.

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