QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Prime Minister) (15:02): I thank the member for her question. You need to look at the whole housing package that we've put together. Our budget helps with the cost of living.
It builds resilience, and it backs aspiration. We're going to help more Australians achieve the dream of owning their own home. We do that, as the person next to the member for Lindsay knew when he wrote his book, by giving young people a crack and by fixing the system.
We want people to be able to aspire to a better life for themselves and their families. Importantly, negative gearing will still be available for new builds, so people can invest in themselves and invest in the nation. That's the big difference with the change that we brought in on Tuesday.
The change that we brought in will allow negative gearing to still exist, but, because people will invest, if they are looking to invest and use negative gearing in new builds rather than old properties, competing with first home buyers, what it will do is also boost supply, and that is the position that we have. Mr Pike interjecting— The SPEAKER: The member for Bowman is now warned.
Mr ALBANESE: The package makes it very clear in the budget papers that there will be more houses, not less, as a result of the things that are in the budget. That's on top of the measures that we have spent four years implementing, that are now rolling out in spite of those opposite doing everything they could to block the Housing Australia Future Fund, everything they could to block build-to-rent, everything they could to block Help to Buy—everything they could to block all of the measures that we have put in place to help build supply.
One of the things that we have done is not just housing, but, of course, when it comes to helping people, which goes to the question, we have the reforms that are in the budget about Medicare and about making sure that cheaper medicines are available and that there's more bulk-billing and record funding for hospitals. Our budget helps people under pressure right now.
We've had five separate tranches now of tax reform, of tax relief. We're cutting people's taxes because we want people to earn more and keep more of what they earn. Those opposite have never ever in their history put in a submission to the Fair Work Commission saying there should be an increase in real wages.
They opposed our tax cuts, and I assume they'll oppose— (Time expired)