QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms O'NEIL (Hotham—Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness and Minister for Cities) (14:26): I'm just laughing at how they have to egg each other on here. 'Great question! Great question!' It's not a great question, and I think those opposite know it. I want to come back to the central point here, because it is a really important one.

House prices in our country have risen by 400 per cent in the last 25 years. I want to be really clear and direct with the parliament. We cannot allow that to happen again for another generation.

If we do, our country will be unrecognisable to us. This has already radically transformed what it means to be aspirational in our country. We've got a generation of young people who tell us repeatedly in polling that they don't think they will ever be able to afford a house in our country.

Any government with any sense of integrity and belief is going to stand up and do something about that. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER: Order! The minister will pause.

She is one minute into her answer. I want to hear the Manager of Opposition Business' point of order. Mr Tehan: On relevance—the minister hasn't addressed the question.

The question is, 'Who was telling the truth, you or the Treasurer?' I know you've got a thing about corrections, but we need to hear the truth. The SPEAKER: I'll hear from the Leader of the House. Mr Burke: It's completely reasonable in response to a question like that to be talking about what's driving the prices in the market, and that's exactly what's being said.

The SPEAKER: Yes. The manager is entitled to raise his point of order. He is correct that the minister was asked a question at the end, but you can't selectively phrase bits of the question that you like.

Unfortunately, if it's all in there, the minister's going to have a go, probably at all parts of the question. I'll make it be directly relevant. She has had a preamble.

I'm going to ask her to return to the question. Ms O'NEIL: I think we see that point of order getting taken because they don't like to hear the reality of what they've done to themselves. That is, that they are the last people standing in this country who can't see that this housing market is broken.

If only those opposite had done something about this problem in the nine years that they sat on the Treasury benches then we might be in a different position, but they chose not to. What you chose to do— Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Casey, the member for Maranoa, the member for Herbert, the Manager of Opposition Business and the Leader of the Opposition all simply yelling at once is not going to get the answer you want and it's not going to help the parliament.

So can I just ask everyone here, from the member for Goldstein down, to just take a breath? No-one else is yelling as much as everyone else is here in the front row. I need everyone, particularly when the minister is on her feet—and if the minister can help the house also by returning to the question, the House will be a lot better for it.

Ms O'NEIL: Instead of choosing to do something about this problem, they so vacated the field that they chose, for the majority of their nine years in government, to not even bother having a Commonwealth housing minister. I want to remind the parliament of how many social and affordable homes they built around our country in that time, in nine long years. It was 373.

That is a national outrage. We've got people across that side of the parliament who think that they speak for regional Australia. They chose to build not a single social and affordable home across the entirety of regional and rural Australia.

We take a different view. We see the pain this is causing in the lives not just of the people that we represent but of the people that those opposite us represent. That's why we're standing up and acting.

We are pulling every lever that the Commonwealth has available to it. And I say again to those opposite: the leadership of the member for Hume is going to be inauspicious and short, I can see that. Let's hope that the leader that follows him takes a different approach to the matter of housing.