MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Senator WALKER (South Australia) (18:26): I always enjoy these debates because Senator Bragg wanders into the chamber, points at Australia's housing crisis and somehow concludes that the people who spent a decade ignoring it are the ones with all the answers. Today's motion is no different. Apparently, Labor's housing agenda is a broken promise.
Apparently, we're doing 'dirty deals'. And, apparently, we're making the housing crisis worse. I know we're only a few days away from the midwinter break, but I think Australians deserve a little bit more than a political press release read into Hansard.
Let's touch some grass for a moment. Australia has a housing crisis. Nobody on this side denies that.
Young people know it, renters know it and people trying to save for a deposit know it. There is unquestionably a housing challenge. The actual question is: who is actually doing something about it?
When those opposite had nearly a decade in government, they treated housing like an optional extra. For a lot of that period, they didn't even have a housing minister; that sounds to me like a skill issue. House prices were skyrocketing, rents were climbing, social housing waiting lists were growing, and the coalition's response was, 'She'll be right.' Now they come in here acting shocked that Australia has a housing shortage.
That's a bit like spending 10 years ignoring a leaking roof and then demanding to know why the carpet is wet when there's a storm. What is the Albanese Labor government actually doing? We're delivering a $47 billion homes for Australia plan.
We're working towards 1.2 million new homes. We're delivering 55,000 social and affordable rental homes and 100,000 homes reserved for first home buyers. We're investing in infrastructure, training more tradies and cutting red tape to get homes built.
And, importantly, we're recognising something that young Australians have been saying for years: housing isn't just a supply problem; it's also about fairness. For too long we've had a system where it can feel easier to build a portfolio of investment properties than to buy your first home. I know the coalition get very nervous whenever anyone suggests the tax system should work for first home buyers as well as investors.
They've spent weeks predicting catastrophe, talking about how, apparently, the sky is falling—the rental market will collapse, and civilisation itself is hanging by a thread. They seem to be having a crash-out of epic proportions. If you listen to the coalition rhetoric over the years, you'd think every reform ever proposed was moments away from ending life as we know it.
Our reforms are designed to encourage investment into new housing supply and help level the playing field for first home buyers. The government's estimates suggest around 75,000 additional first home buyers will be able to enter the market over the coming decade. I find it interesting that the coalition has suddenly become deeply concerned about renters.
This is the same coalition that opposed the Housing Australia Future Fund, opposed help-to-buy and opposed build-to-rent. It is the same coalition whose first instinct, every time a housing measure appears, is to vote against it and then complain that not enough houses are being built. It's a bit of a chopped political strategy to block the housing policies, delay the housing policies, vote against the housing policies and then bring this motion complaining about housing.
At some point everyone has to ask, 'What exactly is their plan here?' So far, the answer seems to be preserving the status quo. The status quo is what got us here. It's true that housing challenges built up over decades, and they won't be solved overnight.
Nobody seriously believes that, but progress is happening. Housing commencements are up. Construction cost inflation has fallen dramatically from the peaks we inherited.
More builders are entering the industry. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been completed since Labor came to office. That doesn't mean the job is finished, but it does mean we're moving in the right direction.