Jodie Belyea (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How does the Albanese Labor government's budget give more Australians a fair crack at buying their first home? Why are those measures important?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Dunkley for her question. Indeed, there are some $2 billion in the budget to speed up approvals and to build connecting infrastructure like roads and sewerage. In addition to that, we have half a billion dollars, which is about speeding up approvals, something that those opposite oppose. That takes the total investment in our Homes for Australia Plan to $47 billion.

In the last four years—when we came to office, those opposite having not had a housing minister for most of their time in office, we wanted to throw everything at supply because we know that's the key. So we have free TAFE and $10,000 payments for construction apprenticeships. We have 100,000 new homes being set aside for first home buyers. We have new social and affordable homes through our Housing Australia Future Fund, which was blocked for a number of years by those opposite and their partners in the Senate. We have new incentives for states and territories to unlock land for development.

The truth is that we are making progress. We have now had more than 240,000 people buy their first home with just a five per cent deposit, and thousands more are participating through Help to Buy. Yet there are still too many Australians who are missing out because the tax system is working against them and has been for a long period of time. Aspiring first home buyers are being locked out of the market because it favours property investors. After years of inaction, those distortions have become entrenched. What we know is that since 1999, since these changes were made, house prices have increased by 400 per cent, more than two times as fast as average incomes. What that means is that younger generations are being locked out. So, after months and years throwing everything at this, we have a situation where young people—so many of them—are close to giving up altogether. We can listen to those stories, take it all in and say, 'I wish I could help you, but I'm only the Prime Minister'—we're not going to do that—or we can take action and take responsibility, which is what we're doing. We're making real change that makes a real difference, even if that does carry a political risk. That is the choice we made in our budget. It's the right choice, the right decision, made for the right reasons in the interests of this younger generation and the generations to come.