Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the question. I hope all of the states would understand, as the federal government does, the importance of all levels of government responding to the need to increase housing supply. That's certainly the way we have approached it, and we will continue to work with state governments and, of course, continue to deliver the programs we are delivering. The facts are that we know Australia has had a housing affordability challenge growing for some time. We know that this has resulted in many—particularly young but not only young—Australians struggling, particularly renters and first home buyers. Unlike those opposite, who teamed up with the Greens to prevent more investment in Australia's housing supply, we recognise that the Commonwealth does have a role in increasing supply. Increasing supply is the primary way in which you can deal with affordability. There are, obviously, other measures that the government is seeking to put in place, including the Help to Buy scheme. I might be wrong, but are they seeking to disallow that as well? Is that right? Is that what Senator Bragg is doing?

In addition, there is the five per cent home deposit scheme. These are all measures that the government is putting in place because we recognise—unlike the government that was in place and of which you were a part, Senator, over nine years—that we have to work together to do something about housing supply. I remind you, Senator, that the government has a $43 billion housing Australia plan. We are investing more than eight times what the coalition did in a decade. We know that home building is improving, and we will keep working at this over the months and years ahead to deliver more houses for more Australians.