Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I said that, when I got elected, housing would be my No. 1 priority. Housing is the issue that is brought up to me consistently when I'm doorknocking, making phone calls or speaking to people at community events. When we talk about the cost of living, what people pay for rent or the mortgage is at the heart of it, because you pay your rent or your mortgage first. The house is the last thing to go when you're struggling to pay your bills.

That's why I think it's great to see that housing is at the front and centre of the Albanese Labor government's agenda, and it's fantastic to hear today that we're bringing forward our commitment to help first home buyers buy a house with just a five per cent deposit, starting this October and not next year as originally planned. Every Australian deserves the chance to own a home, and we know that it's been getting harder and harder for first home buyers. If you have a look at that age group between 25 and 35 years old, those figures show that, in the nineties, homeownership was somewhere around 60 per cent, and now it's heading down to 40 per cent.

But let's not focus on how we got here—just know that, over the last 30 years, there has been a failure to invest in public housing by federal LNP governments. It was part of the postwar miracle of Australia that state and federal Labor and Liberal governments across the country invested in public housing. It was not out of the goodness of our hearts but because we knew that, if we could keep the cost of living down and keep the cost of rent down, we could take the pressure off wages, and that would help business and keep living standards high. In fact, one of the reasons that we attracted a car industry to Australia was public housing. Look at where the car manufacturing plants were. They used to have public housing built around them. In fact, it was part of the charters of the housing trusts around the country to facilitate in the economic development of the state.

I've long believed that providing affordable housing is the biggest impact that a government can have on the economy, and now we're playing catch up. We're going to turn it around, and we're going to do it by working with states, councils and industries to get homes on the ground faster. We're going to do it through schemes like the Help to Buy program, where the government will share the equity of the house with the individuals. We're going to do it through the biggest housing program in over three decades, the Housing Australia Future Fund, and we're going to do it by building 1.2 million homes, of which a hundred thousand will be earmarked for first home buyers. We're going to do it by freezing the construction code, cutting red tape and getting builders back on site faster, and we're going to do it with things like the five per cent deposit for first home buyers, which will start in October.

We're making it so that all first home buyers can access it, with no income caps and no limits on places, and we're lifting the property price cap too so that people can actually find a place that suits their family and their future. This policy cuts through. It shaves years off the time it takes to save a deposit and saves people tens of thousands of dollars in mortgage insurance. Labor is acting to make housing more accessible and equitable.