House debates Questions without Notice

Housing

Tuesday, 15 September 2026 House of Representatives

Clare O'Neil

Clare O'Neil Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing

2:34 pm

I actually really appreciate this question because it goes to the underlying reason why we have such chronic housing issues in our country, and that is that, for 40 years, our country has not been building enough homes. There's one thing I think I probably agree with the honourable member on, and that is that, if we want to fix the housing crisis, if we want to have more affordable housing for Australians, we've got to build, build, build. That's going to improve the situation for everyone.

We have a pro-supply government and we just delivered a pro-supply budget which will build an additional 30,000 homes for the country. Speaker, I might just refresh your memory and the memory of the parliament about why it was a pro-supply budget. Two simple reasons—first, remember that we've made tax changes in the budget, but new builds continue to get access to those very beneficial tax treatments; and, second, of course, there were really important supply initiatives in that budget.

I want to speak just quickly to Budget Paper No. 1, which goes through the impacts of the budget changes. That paper says:

Driven by reforms and investments that reduce barriers to housing supply, this budget will support up to an additional 30,000 homes over the next decade—

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