Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to stand today and speak on housing as a proud member of the Albanese Labor government, with an unwavering commitment to serve the Australian people by delivering more houses for those who need them most—what we took to the election. What I'm not pleased about is what we've witnessed in the Senate this week. We've seen that policy has been cast aside, politics has been elevated above people and decisions have been delayed. This obstructionism has a human cost. Every day that progress is held back in the Senate after 1 July equates to a staggering $1.3 million that is not being invested into social and affordable housing in Australia. To put that in perspective, that's $250 million for every six months that this decision is delayed. The lives affected by this delay are real. There are families who are desperately waiting for a public house. There are key workers, like nurses, police officers and ambulance officers—and let's face it, who can afford to live in Sydney these days?—who want to be close to where they work. They need affordable housing that is close to their work.

As the saying goes, history repeats itself, and the Greens have form in this area. You only have to look back to 10 years ago, when they again sided with the Liberals and played politics on climate change. Because of these avocado activists, Australia saw a decade of inaction on climate change. And now they bleat at us about emergencies—seriously. Now they want to set housing reform in this country back and force more suffering—to amplify a crisis—just so another decade can slip by and they can say: 'Oh, but we dreamed of something better. We held out for the Holy Grail of housing.' Yeah, thanks for that, Greens!

I'll tell you what: it's all or nothing in this crapshoot with the Greens at the moment, and it's not good enough. They posture to their inner-city electorates like ecocentrics, purporting to care for social justice, the environment and people, but when the rubber hits the road for the cars they 'have to drive', based on coal, they simply run away and obfuscate. They want to eat the fresh avocados but leave the rotting ones for the rest of us. Well, it's just not good enough for real Australia.

At the very centrepiece of our ambitious housing reform agenda is the Housing Australia Future Fund, which is set to deliver 30,000 social and affordable rental homes for Australians who are most in need. This is not a theoretical proposition, like most of the Greens policy platform. This is a concrete, tangible lifeline for thousands of Australians struggling with the rising tide of house prices. Despite this, the Greens pursue an all-or-nothing approach. They refuse to see the bigger picture—the progress we could make together. They don't want to take part in any solution. They just want to amplify the problem. They withhold support, forgetting that progress is a journey of steps, not leaps. They're fixated on the perfect and are willing to reject the good in pursuit of it. We argue that it is better to improve the lives of our people in increments than to stagnate, paralysed by ideological purity. Every election I hear people say, 'Oh, Labor are in bed with the Greens!' Let me tell you: that's a very long, old, cold bed! We've seen elections where the Greens have preferenced the Liberals and now a Senate where they vote lock-step with them—the Libs and the ones who are well and truly shacked up in a cosy little house. It's a very dysfunctional arrangement, I want to say, that stops decent Australians having a place to call their own. That's the truth of it.

Since taking office, our government has consistently sought to expand our housing agenda. The immediate release of $575 million, the introduction of the housing accord in our first budget, changes to build-to-rent, the improvement of Commonwealth rent assistance and more financing for social and affordable homes in the last budget all demonstrate our commitment. We just want to get on with it. Last weekend, we announced a $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator to work alongside states and territories. We are doing this. We want to take the Greens with us, and they've got to get on the journey to get Australia housed.