I rise to speak to the appalling housing situation in Australia. We're not building enough homes? Then why doesn't the government just build some? Here are some numbers. Australia has a shortfall of 640,000 homes. The government's target is 40,000 homes over three years. What the government has delivered is 1,600. That's 0.6 per cent of total need. There is no way they're going to meet this target and no plan for what to do when it's not met and no plan to address the full need that exists in the community. Even just on their tiny target, that's four per cent of homes delivered in 40 per cent of the timeframe, but better things are possible.

We've seen it right across the world. We know it's possible to mass build quality public housing. They've done it in Vienna. They've done it in Singapore. Even here in Australia post World War II, 25 per cent of new builds were public housing. But, if the government's response to the worst housing crisis we've seen in generations is to build fewer than 1,000 homes through private developers, it is no wonder that people are losing faith in government and in the states' capacity to do good, useful things.