QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms O'NEIL (Hotham—Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness and Minister for Cities) (14:56): I acknowledge my friend Grisha, who's from Hotham and up in the public gallery, and I also thank the member for Lalor for her question. You're not going to believe this, but almost 6½ thousand of her constituents have got into their first home with the support of our government, and I want everyone she represents to know that she is in this parliament every day fighting for first home buyers to get the fair opportunities that they deserve.

Our government delivered a big housing budget in May, with $2 billion for last-mile infrastructure to build 65,000 more homes and landmark tax reforms to make our housing market fairer for every Australian. Labor believes that secure housing is the foundation of a decent life in this country. So is security in retirement, and Australians should not have to choose between the two, but, increasingly, that is what those opposite are trying to force Australians to do.

Now, if there is one truth emerging today in Australian politics, it is this: the coalition cannot govern this country alone. The numbers simply aren't there. Their only pathway back into government is in some kind of coalition with One Nation.

But, instead of these parties pulling each other towards sensible solutions, what we increasingly see them do is chase each other down these extremist rabbit holes. And we see this in housing. The SPEAKER: The minister will pause.

The manager on a point of order? Mr Tehan: On relevance, as you say: the compare and contrast, or the risk, can be about the policy she's talking about, not going down rabbit holes, as she said, to completely irrelevant things. The SPEAKER: The minister was asked about risks to the policy question that she was asked for about secure and stable housing, so I'm just going to make sure that she's covering that part of the compare and contrast, not a general topic.

Ms O'NEIL: We are increasingly seeing this prevail in our debate about housing. The Liberals have said they want Australians to raid their super to buy a home. Now, I remind the parliament that this is an idea that Saul Eslake said was the worst public policy idea in 60 years in our country.

And now we've got Pauline Hanson getting on the same train. Australians are really smart about housing and they know exactly what these policies will do. They will push house prices even higher, they will create a massive wealth transfer from the young people of our country to the older generation that own the most property wealth and they'll leave so many Australians without much super in their retirement.

But what's worse is that those opposite are basically saying they're not even going to try to fix our broken housing market. Instead, they'll leave a broken system in place and ask Australians to raid their retirement to try to survive it. It is not the job of Australians to pay for a broken housing system by trashing their retirement.

It is the job of this parliament to change our broken housing system, and that's exactly what our government is doing. Australians deserve housing security and they deserve retirement security. The coalition and One Nation are going to make you sacrifice one to get the other.

Labor is going to protect both.