Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for seeking some additional information there for us. The government should be under no illusion. We have spoken in the chamber on a number of occasions. We are entirely supportive of the large-scale spend on public housing. This is an area that has been very much neglected over the last 10 or 15 years or so. It provides a short-term stimulus to the construction sector, which is lagging in Australia since the market began to soften. It also addresses the very important issue of housing availability and housing affordability. So we certainly have no argument with it. As to the scale of the spending, it has fallen short of what the sector has been asking for but it will certainly make very important inroads into affordable housing. The reason I have been fairly persistent on the issue of reporting obligations and how much of this information will be made public is that public housing historically has had a pretty bad name. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity here to create affordable housing for people on low incomes that is not ghettoised and that does not warehouse people in office blocks or cheap and nasty heat traps on the edge of town a long way from services and public transport.

We have an opportunity to get this right and to incorporate the housing that we are building for people on low incomes who are just looking for a decent start into genuinely sustainable communities. We have an opportunity to build energy and water efficient housing that will provide very low-cost accommodation over the long term, close to services, jobs and public transport. That is really what we are looking for. We will not know whether that is happening if, six months down the track, we hear from COAG that they do not intend to report on how we are tracking along on those matters back to the government. I take on board your acknowledgement that that is up to COAG to decide, but we need a degree more comfort from you, Minister, that in fact the Commonwealth will be demanding that the states and territories report back on exactly how well we are doing with the money we are spending.