Emma Comer (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness and Minister for Cities. How is the Albanese Labor government supporting first home buyers into their own homes sooner, and what other approaches to housing is the government being asked to consider?

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

I thank the member for Petrie for her question. Since our government was elected in 2022, almost a thousand of her constituents have bought their first home with the support and backing of our government, and there will be many more to come.

Australia is in the grip of a housing crisis that's been building for 40 years. We know that the long-term fix here is that we've got to build more homes. The majority of our historic $43 billion housing agenda is devoted to doing just that. The more housing we build, the more affordable housing becomes for Australians. We got some good news just yesterday: we learned that building approvals around Australia are up 15.3 per cent on last year. These are meaningful numbers, and this number has been growing fairly consistently now for 20 months. We have got a long way to go on housing, but we're seeing some really important progress. Our government knows that people need help on housing right now, and that is why we are so proud to see a massive expansion in homeownership opportunities. Our government has now helped 197,000 Australians around the country get into their first home with our five per cent deposit scheme.

The member asked me about alternative approaches, and we do see from those opposite a completely different attitude to housing. They are completely out of touch, not just with energy policy but also with the housing experience of Australians. In fairness to those opposite, this is not a new feature of the 48th Parliament. You will remember that, when Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister, he said the answer for young people trying to get into their own home was that parents should shell out to help their kids, which doesn't help much if your parents aren't millionaires. When Joe Hockey was asked what advice he'd give to a young person struggling to get into housing—get this—he said, 'Get a good job that pays good money,' as if the housing challenges facing our country are some kind of personal failing of the young people around the nation.

We know that, for most of the time the coalition were in office, they were so uninterested they didn't even bother having a housing minister, and yesterday the member for Wright said the quiet part out loud. According to him, the coalition didn't have a housing minister because there was no problem with housing under the former government. Let me be really clear. The reason they didn't have a housing minister wasn't that there was no crisis; it was that they didn't care. Under those opposite, house prices in Sydney more than doubled, rents skyrocketed and an entire generation in our country gave up on the idea of homeownership. They spent nine years doing absolutely nothing about this problem. They then went into opposition, and they've spent the last three years trying to block and delay things that will help. They're now doing everything in their power to show all of you in the public gallery that they are not even remotely concerned with your problems; they are just concerned with their own. I wouldn't trust them on housing or anything else that matters to you and your family. (Time expired)