Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

AMVAKINOU () (): My question is to the Treasurer. What was discussed at the Albanese Labor government's first investor roundtable?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Calwell for her question. On Friday the first meeting of the Albanese government's investor roundtable was held in Sydney. I was pleased to co-host it along with my friend the Minister for Housing because what it did was bring together leading investors, major banks, global asset managers and super funds to promote stronger investment in priority areas. Friday's focus was affordable housing, and, more particularly, the housing accord that we announced on budget night, which is all about bringing together investors, state governments, local governments—like that led so ably by my friend Matt Burnett, the mayor of Gladstone, up there in the gallery—the building industry and others.

Those in the room on Friday represented trillions of dollars of funds under management, all there to see how we can work together to address one of our nation's biggest challenges. I want to thank everyone who was there in the room: the CEOs of the major banks; the heads of Australia's leading retail and industry super funds; major institutional investors; the Future Fund; leaders in the property sector and community housing; and the ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr, who was representing the state and territory treasurers. We worked through some of the barriers to large-scale investment in affordable housing, and we talked about financing solutions to encourage greater investment.

At a time when we've got low vacancy rates and high rents, we need to do what we can to bring people together around the table to solve some of our big economic challenges. I'm really pleased that there have already been concrete outcomes out of the first roundtable. Just yesterday, the National Australia Bank announced that they've set a new target: to lend an additional $6 billion over the next six years to build more affordable homes across the country. That will be loaned to social and community housing providers, disability accommodation projects, build-to-rent projects and some of the government's housing programs.

The CEO of NAB, Ross McEwen, said that he welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the discussion at the Treasurer's Investor Roundtable. We welcome this really important contribution from NAB as well as from other players: Aware Super, AXA, Australian Retirement Trust, HESTA, Cbus and others.

This is a terrific start, but it's just the start of our work to get more investment into affordable, well located housing so that people can live closer to where the jobs and opportunities are being created. It's just the start of our work to help make sure that we can harness trillions of dollars of Australian capital to deliver wins for investors, super fund members and the nation.