Anne Urquhart (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. How is the Albanese Labor government helping regional Australians into homeownership after a decade of being ignored?

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I thank the member for Braddon for her question but also for her extraordinary advocacy for her community. If anyone has met the member for Braddon, you will know she is an extraordinarily fierce advocate for her community. She's very hard to say no to, and she is a terrific representative.

Whether it is Devonport, Ballarat, Bendigo, Leichhardt or Lingiari, Labor represents the regions across every single corner of this country, and this evening I absolutely look forward to welcoming the Prime Minister to the regional city and my hometown of Ballarat for one of the many bush summits being held this week. The Prime Minister has attended all of the bush summits. He was in Wagga this week and he'll be in my hometown of Ballarat this evening.

I know that one of the things that my community and every regional Australian is looking forward to hearing about is the Albanese government's delivery on housing for the regions, something that was neglected under those opposite. Our $43 billion plan for housing is making a real and substantial difference across regional Australia, in particular the decision to bring forward, from 1 October this year, the expanded regional home guarantee scheme. This will mean no income or location caps, with all regional Australians being able to benefit from that policy. Regional first home buyers will be able to get into the property market with a five per cent deposit, without having to pay lenders mortgage insurance.

For far too long regional Australians had been left behind under those opposite. We saw a decade of their ignoring of regional Australia's housing issues, with no plan for housing, no plan, frankly, for investing in significant infrastructure and no real support for regional communities. We are doing the hard work, building the homes, building the infrastructure and backing regional growth with real funding. We're all getting regional Australians into more homes and sooner.

Since introducing the regional first home buyer guarantee in 2022, we've issued over 23,500 guarantees in the regions and supported 38,500 regional Australians into homeownership. In my own hometown of Ballarat, thanks to Labor's scheme, a thousand families, a thousand people, have benefited from getting into a first home because of the policies of this government. It, of course, comes on top of our $1.5 billion of investment in infrastructure to really get housing moving, particularly in the regions.

The opposition had a decade to act on regional housing. All they did, frankly, was leave it in crisis, and we are once again having to clean up their mess.