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

I really appreciate this question from the member for Moncrieff, because it's a broad one that allows me to go a little bit back to basics with the parliament about what's happened to housing in our country. We have got a housing crisis in our country that has been building for 40 years. This is a crisis today which is hurting literally millions of people who live in our country. We see that for renters, who are living with housing insecurity and rising rents in a way that should never be happening in a country like Australia. We see it for young people, who are desperate to get into their own home and who are doing all the right things in saving and working hard, yet watching that opportunity go further and further away from them. And, if we want to get to the absolutely worst aspect of this crisis, we see it everywhere in our streets of suburbs, where a rising number of Australians are literally without a roof over their head.

Now, I have a pretty traditional view. We got into this parliament to solve the big problems facing our country, and there is not a single person behind me who looks at that situation and says, 'We're not going to do anything about that.' Speaker, I say this really clearly to you. This is a situation hurting millions of people. Those opposite are the only people in the country that cannot see we've got a broken housing market in this nation.

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