Charlotte Walker (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Housing has become one of those topics where every Australian seems to have a story. You hear it at pub dinners, at school pick-up, in group chats and in awkward conversations between parents and adult kids who still can't afford to move out. People are exhausted. They're Australians doing everything right, yet they feel like homeownership is drifting further away every single year. Young people are battling each other for rental properties like it's The Hunger Games. Families who absolutely would have owned a home a generation ago cannot get a foothold in the market. Renters are watching prices jump again and again while their wages do not. Homelessness is becoming more visible in suburbs and regional towns, where people never used to see it before. People know something is broken.

I think what frustrates Australians most is that housing has become so politicised that sometimes it feels harder to get an honest conversation than it is to get a rental application approved. This crisis did not appear overnight. For a long time, the Commonwealth stepped back from housing and left most of the heavy lifting to the states. During most of the coalition's nine years in government, they did not even have a housing minister. That still blows my mind. Imagine looking at the scale of this crisis years ago and going, 'She'll be right.' Meanwhile, Australia underbuilt homes for years while our population grew, our cities expanded and construction became slower, harder and more expensive. So, no, this is not a crisis that can be fixed with one announcement or even one budget. What matters is whether governments are willing to genuinely engage with the problem, and this government is.

Under Prime Minister Albanese, the Commonwealth stopped being a bystander and started acting like housing is a national priority again. That means tackling the crisis from multiple angles at once: building more homes, backing renters, helping first home buyers and actually trying to increase supply instead of just yelling at each other on television panels. There has been real progress already. Since coming to government, more than 240,000 Australians have bought their first home with a five per cent deposit. More than one million households have been supported through increases to rent assistance. We now have more than 24,000 social and affordable homes either planned or under construction, with thousands already completed. That matters because behind every housing statistic is somebody trying to build a life, somebody trying to raise kids somewhere stable, somebody trying to stay close to work, family or community instead of being pushed further and further out.

I think younger Australians are particularly tired of hearing housing discussed like it is some abstract economic concept instead of the thing shaping almost every major life decision they make. People are delaying relationships, delaying kids, moving back home, living with five housemates at 30, spending absurd percentages of their income on rent and then being told they just need to budget better by people who bought houses when a deposit cost roughly the same as a medium-sized iced latte now. Australians don't expect miracles from government, but they do want seriousness. They want homes built faster. They want more medium-density housing near transport and jobs. They want less pointless red tape. They want renters to be treated fairly. They want governments willing to admit this crisis is structural and requires long-term effort, because there is no silver bullet here.

The answer is not blame; it's building—building social housing, building affordable housing, building homes for first home buyers, building infrastructure so communities can grow sustainably and building enough confidence back into the system so younger Australians can imagine a future where stable housing is not treated like some impossible luxury. Housing should not feel unattainable in a country like Australia. Whilst there is still a long way to go, this government is at least willing to roll up its sleeves and actually do the work.