Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let's be honest about what this bill, the Housing Australia Amendment (Accountability) Bill 2025, would do. It would make it harder for first home buyers to buy their own home. This bill by the Liberal Party—by Senator Bragg—will make it harder for first home buyers to buy their first home and will stand in the way of the delivery of affordable housing for Australians. That's what this bill will do.

There's the saying, 'I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed'—but, no, I'm actually pretty angry. I think Australians who are looking to get into their first home have the right to be angry too, because what's really clear with this bill before us is that the Liberal Party are only here to play politics. At least they're consistent. They will continue their record of doing absolutely nothing to help address the housing crisis that their government left us in. Only Labor has got a plan to build more homes. Only Labor will get renters a better deal. And only Labor will help more Australians into homeownership.

Housing is one of the biggest challenges facing Australians. People are working hard, they're doing everything right, but too many still can't afford a place to call home. Young people are lining up, down the street and around the block, for rental inspections. In fact, one of my young staff told me yesterday that she and her housemate had been to 100 rental inspections between them in Perth. That is just extraordinary. Families with kids, the kinds of families who, a generation ago, would have been quite easily able to own their own home, can't get a foothold in the housing market. I hear it from young people in my home state of Western Australia all the time. They feel they will never get the opportunity to own their own home. We hear it from parents who worry they can't give their kids the stability they received as children.

We know how tough the housing market is, and that is why we are throwing everything at it. We have an ambitious $43 billion housing agenda, which is having an impact right across the country. We've taken the Commonwealth from being, frankly, a negligent bystander in housing to delivering the boldest and most ambitious housing agenda this country has seen in the postwar period. Under the Prime Minister, we've made a real switch and we're tackling the housing crisis from every angle. Our Housing Australia Future Fund is a $10 billion investment to build 55,000 new social and affordable homes over the next five years. It's the largest national investment in housing in a generation. It's a permanent, ongoing source of funding to increase supply—that is, build more houses—but also to create jobs and to make housing more affordable for Australians who have been priced out for too long. It is our long-term commitment to rebuild our social housing system.

Meanwhile, those on the other side of the chamber are actively trying to make it more difficult for Australians to own their own home. They are actively trying to make it more difficult for us to build more houses. They are standing in the way of more affordable housing for Australians, and, without a credible housing policy of their own, all they do is block and bulldoze. For almost a decade while they were in government, the Liberals and Nationals were completely tapped out of our national housing challenge. They completely ignored it, shut their eyes, turned away, turned their back on Australians and showed no leadership on housing. They had no plan and they made no investment into improving housing supply. For most of their nine years in government, the coalition didn't even have a housing minister. Can you imagine? It's extraordinary.

It's no wonder that, when we came to government, this country had nothing to show on housing for the nine years that those opposite were in government. After almost a decade in government, the Liberals and Nationals had built only 373 social and affordable homes. Again, I'm not disappointed anymore; I'm angry. Australians are angry, young people are angry, and they want us to take action.

But, at the last election, those opposite actually made a promise to cut the number of homes that would be built, because they wanted to scrap our Housing Australia Future Fund and bulldoze the policy of tens of thousands of new social and affordable homes. They promised to increase taxes on new affordable rental properties, and they promised to scrap our target of building 1.2 million homes. In the first six months of the new parliament, my first six months here, I must say I didn't have high expectations of those opposite, but I have been shocked that they tried to bulldoze 80,000 new rental homes that would offer more security and more affordable rent for Australians, when they attempted to block and undo our build-to-rent laws. I've been shocked and angry that they have voted against every single housing measure that we have brought before this place. And now the shadow minister for housing and homelessness, Senator Bragg, is trying to rip up our plan for five per cent deposits for all first home buyers. It's surprising to me that, after an election where Australians resoundingly rejected the politics of delay and destruction peddled by those opposite, they are still sending a message to young Australians that they haven't listened and haven't learnt. Instead, they've reverted to their usual tactics of blocking and bulldozing at every single opportunity.

The true test of a housing policy, if we get to the real thing that we need now, is getting more people into homes. We don't need more bureaucracy and we certainly don't need more paperwork. This Housing Australia Amendment (Accountability) Bill proposed by Senator Bragg would allow the coalition and the Greens to team up once again to block real progress on housing. If we were to pass this bill, it would give the Senate the opportunity to disallow the Home Guarantee Scheme, which has already helped more than 185,000 Australians into homeownership since we came to government. I'm going to say that number again because it's a really impressive number—185,000 Australians into homeownership since we came to government. If this bill were to pass the Senate, it would allow the opposition to scrap Labor's Help to Buy program, a program which will help another 40,000 Australian families into homeownership.

What will this mean for Australians who are working hard and doing everything right? The Liberals want to make it harder for tens of thousands of first home buyers to get into their own home, by increasing the amount they need for their deposit. Every Australian first home buyer will be forced to fork out an average of $23,000 for lenders mortgage insurance if they try to buy a home. The social and affordable housing projects that are under construction right now will be delayed or stopped, making more Australians wait longer for secure, affordable housing, when they're already doing it tough. Without the Commonwealth support that community housing providers need to plug the gap, the construction of thousands of social and affordable homes around the country will just stop. That would be the impact of this bill if it were to pass this place.

My message to those opposite is really simple. You don't fix the housing crisis by blocking the building of new homes. You don't fix the housing crisis by bulldozing plans to construct the homes that we need. No-one is pretending that this is a simple task—to build the housing at the scale that we need to fix this crisis.

Debate interrupted.