PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr FRENCH (Moore) (11:07): It takes a certain amount of nerve for the coalition to come into this place and lecture the government about housing. Australia's housing shortage did not appear overnight; for decades, we have failed to build enough homes. In the nine years of the former coalition government—the whole time they were in office—they didn't have a housing minister.

Now they have apparently discovered housing; better late than never, I suppose! But Australians do not need another political motion; they need homes. Young people are working hard and wondering if they will ever own one.

Parents are watching their kids face a much harder path into homeownership than they did. Renters are lining up with dozens of other applicants and watching rents rise again. There is one basic fact in the centre of this debate: we need to build more homes.

But building homes is not about just about laying bricks; you need roads, you need power, you need schools, you need sewerage and, particularly in Western Australia, you need water. Perth can no longer rely on rainfall alone. Streamflow into our dams has fallen by around 80 per cent compared with historical levels, and desalination now provides the majority share of Perth's drinking water.

In 2006, Western Australia opened its first large-scale seawater desalination plant, in Kwinana. At the time, it was derided by some, and those opposite, as a white elephant. It turned out to be one of the most important pieces of infrastructure WA has ever built.

Then we built a second one, and Western Australia is now building its third desalination plant, in Alkimos, because a growing city needs infrastructure to support that growth. There is a lesson in that. Good governments do not wait until the tap runs dry before they build the infrastructure, and we should not wait until the housing shortage gets worse before we build the homes and services Australia needs.

After years in which the Commonwealth largely walked away from housing, Labor has put the Commonwealth back at the table. We have a $47 billion housing agenda focused overwhelmingly on supply. We have agreed with the states and territories on a national target of 1.2 million new homes.

More than 660,000 homes have been built nationally since Labor came to office. And we are seeing progress. Building approvals in the June quarter of 2026 were more than 26 per cent higher than two years earlier.

New home commencements were more than 15 per cent higher in the March quarter. Construction-cost inflation, which reached 17 per cent under the former government, has fallen substantially. Nobody on this side is pretending the job is finished.

But if the opposition genuinely believes Australia needs more homes, perhaps it should stop tearing down the programs that are building them. They have opposed build to rent. They've tried to scrap help to buy.

They have opposed the Housing Australia Future Fund and the five per cent deposit pathway for first homebuyers. You cannot spend Monday complaining that Australia does not have enough homes and then spend Tuesday trying to dismantle the programs building them. That is not a housing policy.

It is a contradiction with a press release attached. I know personally what getting a foothold in the housing market can mean. I bought my first home in Perth when I was a fourth-year electrical apprentice.

I was not working in the mines. I was working in Perth, earning apprentice wages, and I was still able to buy my first home. That should not be a story from another era.

A young apprentice today should still be able to think, 'If I work hard, save and stick at it, I can get there.' So should a nurse, a teacher, a retail worker, a firefighter. But for too many young Australians, that pathway now feels much further away. That is why we are tackling both sides of the problem.

We are building more homes and we are making it easier to buy one. Eligible first homebuyers can now purchase with a five per cent deposit, and the government has already supported more than 270,000 people into homeownership through the scheme. Single parents can continue to access the family home guarantee with a deposit as low as two per cent.

Homeownership should not become something reserved for people with wealthy parents or very high incomes. If I could buy my first home as a fourth-year apprentice working in Perth, we should be doing everything we can to make sure the next generation gets the same shot.