The member for Forde is one of our strongest advocates in the parliament for first home buyers. He has now helped 3,374 people in his electorate into homeownership; what an amazing achievement!

I can report to the parliament that, as of today, under the five per cent deposit program, our government has now helped more than 290,000 Australians get the keys to their own home. Just over a year ago we uncapped and expanded that scheme, and since then alone more than 100,000 Australians have gotten the keys to their own home. That is almost 300,000 people who have got a front door of their own, who have got security, who have got stability and who have got a place to put down roots for their family.

One of the best parts of my job is meeting the incredible young people who have tapped this program to get into homeownership. Recently, I met Jess and Roman, in Hobart. They welcomed Minister Collins and I into their absolutely beautiful home. This is a young married couple who wanted nothing more than a home of their own. We sat around the kitchen table and we shared a cup of tea, and Jess said something that has stuck with me: 'Having a space that was ours, that we loved, just feeling that sense of security—I didn't realise it was something that we didn't have before.' This is a theme that I hear again and again—that sense of peace that comes over these young people when they get the homeownership opportunity they deserve. In Geelong, brothers Jordan and Josh have bought their own home together, after we expanded the scheme to allow siblings to jointly apply. Josh said they probably wouldn't have done it on their own for quite a while, but the scheme made them able to do it much sooner.

What we see with this fantastic program, which is changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, is that when we give the young people of this country the opportunity they deserve they grab it with both hands. Of those almost 300,000 participants, the strong majority came into the program with a deposit of more than five per cent, and we can see from the data that this group of people are diligently paying off their mortgages. In fact, five per cent deposit program holders are, on average, more ahead on their mortgage than the average mortgage holder in our country. The average time that a couple will spend on this scheme is just 2.5 years, and more than a quarter of the young people that got into the housing market through this scheme have already graduated out of it.

It's pretty simple: our government believes in aspiration, and there is no greater aspiration for the young people of this nation than getting into a home of their own. We are incredibly proud to have now helped 290,000 Australians realise that dream, and there will be many more thousands to come under our government.