QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Ms O'NEIL (Hotham—Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness and Minister for Cities) (14:18): I thank the member for Goldstein for his question. On average, there have been more first home buyers each and every year under our government than there have ever been under any other government in Australian history. And do you know what?
We're actually really, really proud of that. One of the main drivers of it is the five per cent deposit program. This program has now helped 260,000 Australians get into a home of their own.
Of course, those landmark housing tax reforms that we made in the federal budget are going to provide even more opportunity for first home buyers around the country. We'll see 75,000 rental households get into their first home, which will reverse a decade's worth of decline in the homeownership rate. I just want to provide a quick contrast with those opposite, who want to rebreak the housing market.
They want to take away first-home-owner supports. The SPEAKER: The member for Goldstein on a point of order. Mr Tim Wilson: On relevance: it was an extremely tight question, and it didn't ask for alternative proposals, as you would well know.
The SPEAKER: The Leader of the House. Mr Burke: To the point of order, the minister just referred to the fact that she was going to contrast, and the concept of ministers being able to compare and contrast has always been allowed. The SPEAKER: We'll hear from the Manager of Opposition Business.
Mr Tehan: The member can contrast but has to contrast in relation to the question, which was a very tight question: this calendar year, how much has the number of first homebuyers dropped? That was the question. The SPEAKER: Yes, you're both right.
As Speaker Smith indicated on 26 February 2020, probably all Speakers in the last 20 or 30 years have allowed ministers to compare and contrast briefly. The minister was on her feet and she was about to compare. I don't know what the compare and contrast is—perhaps if we'd waited to hear what that was first.
We're just going to allow her, if she's doing a compare and contrast, to make sure it's directly relevant to this answer. She can't compare and contrast other topics. She wasn't asked about that.
Consistent with previous rulings, we'll allow the minister to continue and to make sure that she's being directly relevant. Ms O'NEIL: Thank you, Speaker. I'm just talking about the fantastic new homeownership pathways that have been opened up by our government, and I've spoken about some of the numbers that are relevant to this question.
But of course you don't actually need to take my word for it. We all read the newspapers of a Sunday morning, and for the first time in my life they are peppered with article after article about first home buyers around the country who are going to auctions and winning. And it's not rocket science.
There's a very simple reason they're winning auctions. For the first time in 25 years, first home buyers are standing on a level playing field. And I want to remind the public that, up until this point, those opposite have engineered a system where the young people of this country have been paying taxes to subsidise the investor next to them to outbid them at auctions every Saturday.
We have bought that system to an end, and we are damn proud to have done it. I want to talk about a recent sale, in the electorate of Fraser, of a house in Footscray that sold for $817,000. The real estate agent said there was 'a bit of emotion' when the vendors and the buyers met post-auction, as the vendors had bought that as their first home, and they were handing it to a young couple who were after their first home.
And in the electorate of the fantastic member for Wills, a three-bedroom townhouse on a converted squash court sold in post-auction negotiations for $810,000 to a first home buyer. The real estate agent said: 'A lot of first home buyers walked through this one. There are a lot of buyers around that are first home buyers.
They are the ones that are still moving in a timely manner.' We're on the side of first home buyers, and I think we can see from those opposite that they are the last man standing, defending the broken housing market in this country. We're making the real change that Australians are asking for on housing.