Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

Well, we're doing both. We will implement our election commitments, and one of those was—and we asked many times around this—around the stage 3 tax cuts. They have been legislated by the previous parliament, and we are not going to change that. That was our policy, and we made that decision probably 18 months before the campaign. As the Prime Minister has said, we will do in government what we said we would do during the campaign and in opposition.

On the housing crisis, yes, that means absolute priority attention from government. This is another one of those areas where nine years of neglect and refusal to work with states and territories have left us in the position that we are in now. We will pick up the mess left by the former government and work constructively with states and territories on how to best deal with the crisis in housing, particularly for those who need housing at the affordable end. We also have our Housing Australia Future Fund, which is one of those key commitments that we will roll out through the budget process to make sure the Commonwealth is back in the game of housing and housing policy, which those opposite absolutely neglected and didn't treat with the priority that they should have been dealt with for the nine years they were in government. We didn't have a housing minister for a long time. We didn't have a national housing policy; I don't think we ever had a national housing policy. These are the things that need fixing, working across the states and territories. They have a big stake in the game here and work with the federal government on improving access to housing and opportunities for housing, and we will do that.