Jo Briskey (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the minister for housing, homelessness and cities: what is the Albanese Labor government doing to deliver homes that Australians need? Is the minister aware of any risks to the government's plans?

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Maribyrnong for her really important question. She is one of our housing guns, a group of members of parliament who have come into our chamber in 2025, and they share my view that our housing policies are amongst the most important things the Albanese government is doing for our country. We believe that because we see our housing policies changing the lives of the people that we come to this chamber to represent. In the Maribyrnong electorate alone there are now 929 social and affordable houses in planning or construction, almost a thousand homes in her electorate alone, and I want the chamber to know how many social and affordable homes the coalition built in her electorate in nine years. Can you guess the answer? The answer is zero. In three years we have got 929,000 homes on the go; in nine years they built none. You're not going to believe this, but the truth is that in the nine years they were in office they did not build a single social or affordable house in the whole state of Victoria.

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Members on my left will cease interjecting.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I share this with the parliament partly because I'd like you to understand the scale of the transformation that our government is undertaking. We are taking the Commonwealth from where they were for nine years—negligent bystanders for most of that time, without a housing minister—and we have now built the most bold and ambitious housing agenda a Commonwealth government has had since the postwar period. We have got a $43 billion agenda on the go here, with three big things we're doing: we're building more homes, we're making sure renters get a better deal and we're making sure Australians get into homeownership. The results are starting to speak for themselves: 180,000 people around the country have got into their first home with our government's backing. We've got a million households around the country which are getting an almost 50 per cent increase in Commonwealth rent assistance, and we've got homebuilding that's turning a corner.

I'm asked about risks. This is an important one because there is no question here: the single biggest risk to the progress we are making on housing is those opposite. It wasn't enough that they didn't do anything for a decade; for the last three years they've been coming to this parliament and being housing hypocrites, complaining about things not working and then stopping us building more homes desperately needed by Australians. What do the public think about this? A Fin Review poll published on the weekend shows that, of former coalition voters, more than 60 per cent do not support their approach to affordable housing. The voters can see right through them, and they've got an important question here: are we going to see three more years of housing hypocrisy, or are those opposite going to work with our government to get on with addressing this issue, key as it is to the lives of the people we represent?