QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator CAROL BROWN (Tasmania) (15:07): I also rise to take note of answers. Listening to those opposite on housing, you would think that they had just discovered the housing crisis yesterday. For years under their watch, house prices ran away from wages.

They watched younger Australians get locked out of homeownership. They watched investors enter auctions with tax advantages that a young couple trying to buy their first home simply did not have. Their answer was always the same: do nothing.

Now that a Labor government has actually changed the system, suddenly the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation have discovered an interest in housing. They're very good at defending the status quo. They are very good at finding something to complain about, but they are not very good at explaining how a young Australian is supposed to buy their first home under the system they want to protect.

We make no apologies for backing first home buyers. For 25 years, house prices grew at around twice the rate of incomes. That was not sustainable.

So we have reformed negative gearing and capital gains tax because the system needed to be fairer. Treasury modelling shows that these changes will help about 75,000 more Australians move from renting into owning their own home. This is what this debate should actually be about.

We are building more homes and levelling the playing field for first home buyers. Too many Australians, as I've said, were feeling that housing was stacked against them, especially young Australians. We've built the most ambitious housing agenda in generations, and we're building on this plan.

This plan that this government has implemented and is, as I've said, the most ambitious housing agenda in generations is not supported by those opposite. They don't come in here and support more housing. They vote against it.

They voted against the government's plan. We know that the long-term fix for housing is to build more homes. That's why we have this ambitious national target of 1.2 million new homes.

We're delivering 55,000 social and affordable rental homes. We're building 100,000 homes reserved for first home buyers. To unlock these homes, we're training more tradies, building more infrastructure, cutting red tape, including pausing the National Construction Code, and fast-tracking environmental approvals.

In the 2026-27 budget alone, we invested a further $2 billion in enabling infrastructure to unlock 65,000 new homes. We're taking more action to speed up housing approvals and cut red tape to unlock tens of thousands more homes. This is a debate about supporting a government that is supporting Australians to get into their own homes or supporting an opposition who voted against them owning their own homes.

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