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

I appreciate the question from the member opposite. She asked about the legislation that passed the parliament on Thursday, legislation that delivered every single one of Australia's 13 million workers with a tax cut, and legislation that, for the first time, puts first home buyers in our country on a level playing field with investors. Why has the government taken this action? Because we see the pain that the housing crisis is causing Australians, and, instead of ignoring their problems like those opposite chose to do in the nine years that they were in government, we are delivering real change for Australians.

With regard to the impact on house prices, I think the parliament is very well versed on this one. In the medium term, the advice from Treasury is that house prices in Australia will continue to rise but a little bit more slowly than they otherwise would have. There's a lot that goes into house prices, interest rates being the dominant factor. I hope and I expect that those opposite understand that the Treasury modelling showed a slightly slower growth rate of about two percentage points slower than otherwise would have been the case. What do we get for that? We get something incredibly special.

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