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

Well, well, well! I think the Academy Award for best actor in a drama this week goes to Senator Birmingham for that performance of apparently trying to help the government, to assist the government with its program, and to do that with a straight face—although I notice there's a bit of a smile on your face now. The government did not grant leave for this because we had organised our program, our program has listed the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill as the priority bill, and this is government legislation time. There is a lot of time through the rest of the week when other senators get to list priorities for them. This is not part of that time.

The government's priority is the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill. I understand that the antihousing alliance in the Senate will be working together to try to get this motion up, because that's the priority for them. The priority for the Greens political party and the opposition is to not support the investments that we want to make in increasing the supply of housing in this country, so they can only be referred to as the antihousing alliance. It is an unusual alliance. It's an alliance that's been created from different points of view. So we have the opposition saying that they don't want investment in housing because we are spending too much and we have criticism from the Greens, saying that it's not enough. But the end result of the antics that have been carried out in this place over the past week will be that this legislation fails to pass. It will delay the establishment of that fund. It will delay disbursements from that fund to allow the building of 30,000 social and affordable housing properties in this country over five years. That is the game they are playing. They are playing a game on housing supply. They might think it's funny and it might work in the Greens sub-branches in the inner-city where people are already comfortable in their homes, but this is about other people in this country, people who are struggling to find accommodation after a decade of dysfunction, delay and neglect from those opposite, who didn't care about social and affordable housing and who didn't care about housing supply in this country.

The failure of that policy has brought us to the point we are at today, where we have a significant shortfall in supply, and this Senate is saying, 'We don't want to increase the supply of housing in this country.' That is the direct result of the decision that they are taking in ganging up together, the antihousing alliance parties, to stop this bill from progressing. We have tried a number of times this week to extend hours to allow for debate, and the antihousing alliance have taken decisions to filibuster in a whole range of areas in the program to not allow that to happen. So don't come in here and say the government didn't allow enough time. We have tried to provide time so that people had the opportunity to debate the bill.

There are amendments to the bill. There have been discussions about the bill. We have been working on this for months. We have been in deep negotiations, not with the 'noalition' because they have disengaged and won't even come to the table. If you don't come to the table, you write yourself out. That's fine. That's a decision that Mr Dutton and his leadership team have made. We get that. They're just not going to be any part of the future of this country. Fine. But for the Greens political party to take this position and to gang up on us and to frustrate any attempt to have a long-term sustainable funding stream into social and affordable housing is something that they will have to live with. We will let everybody know that this is what they are up to. We will have to work out how to ensure that the Commonwealth is able to increase the supply of housing in this country, and we will, because we are focused on it and it is our priority. We have made that clear with other investments we are making in housing through NHFIC and through some of the tax changes the Treasurer announced on Tuesday.

Let's just speak very bluntly about what is happening here today. What is happening is that we have the Greens political party, the Liberal Party and the Nationals joining together to tell Australians who rely on social and affordable housing that political games are more important than them. That is what is happening here. No dressing it up with some apparently helpful motion to reorganise the program is going to give them cover on that. (Time expired)