QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms CATHERINE KING (Ballarat—Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) (14:27): Can I thank the member for Richmond for her question. Like many of us who live in regional areas, her community in the New South Wales North Coast and mine in western Victoria are feeling the effects of a broken housing system. As housing has got more expensive in the capital cities, many city investors have looked to the regions for investment.

We welcome that investment, but, as a result, young people trying to buy their first home are being pushed to the back of the queue in our regional areas—young people that want to stay in their hometowns of Ballina or Ballarat but found that they could no longer afford to do so. Since coming into government, we have been working hard to fix this. Already, under the five per cent deposit scheme introduced by this government, more than 250,000 Australians have bought their own home.

That includes 1,600 in my own hometown of Ballarat. Our new $2 billion Local Infrastructure Fund introduced in this budget will support local councils to unlock much needed housing development. This fund will be open to local government and state utility companies to apply for and will build the critical last-mile infrastructure like water, power and sewerage needed to support housing developments.

We're upskilling regional Australians through free TAFE. Today we have taken that next step to reform our tax system and make it easier to get first home buyers into the housing market. The legislation that has just passed this House will help more than 75,000 Australians into their first home.

The problem we face in the housing market in the cities and in the regions has been decades in the making. For too long, first home buyers have had a housing system stacked against them. On this side, we are making those vital investments and introducing important reforms to get young people in the cities and particularly in our regions into homes.

We are already seeing that change. A home in North Ballarat a couple of weekends ago sold to a first home buyer in his early 30s and every other single registered bidder at that auction was an owner-occupier. That has not been happening in our regions for a long, long time.

This was one of the first homes under the hammer since we announced these reforms, and already the difference is noticeable at auctions in our regions. But, over there, they call these changes absolutely a gimmick. There's a reason they didn't have a housing minister when they were in government.

There's a reason that they did not back these reforms and voted against them. Fundamentally, they believe we should just leave things as they are and that everything is going perfectly okay and we should make no changes at all, help no young people, let the problem just rot and get worse. The grand coalition of inaction would only deepen Australia's housing crisis, particularly for young people in our regions.