Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing. How have experts and advocates received the Albanese Labor government's housing reform package to help first home buyers? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches to these reforms?

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

I thank the member for Jagajaga for her question. I was in her electorate with the Prime Minister just a week ago, visiting some of the 743 social and affordable homes that we are building in great electorate of Jagajaga.

Australians have got a housing system that's stacked against them. We want Australians to get ahead and we want them to particularly do it in a home that they own. But in today's housing market there is nothing but heartbreak for the young people of this country. They are doing all the right things: they are studying longer than ever, they are working harder than ever and they are saving longer than ever. Yet, still, they're turning up to auctions and, more often than not, getting outbid by investors standing next to them who are backed in by the Australian taxpayer.

Our government wants something pretty simple and straightforward for our country, and that is for Australia to be a place where citizens on every income level can aspire to homeownership and realise that dream for themselves and their families. We want to live in a country where housing is fair to Australians. That's all. And that's why we're standing up and changing the housing system of our country.

We're doing that by backing in first home buyers through the five per cent deposit program, and we're levelling the playing field at auctions. Experts, economists and housing advocates are backing in the effect of these reforms. Economist Saul Eslake said the reforms will create more opportunities for aspiring first home buyers. National Shelter said the budget begins to rebalance the system back towards first home buyers, renters and the delivery of new homes. And former New South Wales Liberal minister Rob Stokes, who's now at Faith Housing Australia, said Australia should not be a country where the system makes it easier to accumulate multiple investment properties than for young people to own their first home—finally, a Liberal of this country who gets it. Rob Stokes can see what I can see, what the Prime Minister can see and what everyone behind me can see. That is that the status quo cannot continue. Something had to change, and that's why we're standing up and changing it.

Importantly, we are continuing to support investment in new housing supply. If you are a young person in this country and you want to get ahead, we want to support you to do it. If you want to do it through property, you can still get access to those generous housing concessions. But what we ask is that you do something for the country, and that is build a desperately needed new home.

I'm asked about alternatives. The coalition are the only people I can find in our country today who are continuing to defend the broken status quo. They are the only people who feel no sense of sympathy for the young people of our country who are suffering and the parents and the grandparents who are worried about them. We've got a clear plan to deliver a fairer housing system for the country, and on Thursday we're going to start legislating to make it happen.