DOCUMENTS

Senator WHITEAKER (Western Australia) (09:27): Never has the contrast been more stark between those of us on this side of the chamber and the Liberals and the Greens, who are again teaming up to tie up this chamber's time in endless OPDs, stand in the way of budget savings and tackling intergenerational inequality and stand in the way of us fixing the integrated assessment tool that older Australians are asking for.

It's the same pattern, day after day, in this place. Certainly, we're seeing it very clearly this week. I wonder what the 102,000 Australians who've entered the housing market just in the past year since Labor expanded the five per cent home deposit scheme would say to Senator McKenzie's and Senator Bragg's claims that our housing policy has failed.

That's 102,000 Australians who are living in their own home. Do Senator McKenzie and Senator Bragg and the Greens want them to just stay in rentals? Senator McKenzie and Senator Bragg want to tie Australians up in paying rent to their property investor mates instead of living in a home that they own.

I know that my generation don't want to be paying rent for the rest of their lives to the Liberal and National parties' property investor mates. They want to be in a home of their own, and I am proud of our Labor government's agenda and of our action to help young Australians get into their own home. A hundred and two thousand Australians have been able to buy their very first home with only a five per cent deposit.

And it's not just those Australians who've benefited. Over the life of our five per cent home deposit scheme, it's 280,000 Australians since 2022, since we came to government. That's nearly 300,000 Australians who I'm fairly confident don't believe the scheme is a failure of government policy.

I think it's exactly what young people want to see from their government, and that's why we are committed to continuing to do that work. I welcome the day when the Liberal Party come into this place with their housing plan. We know that for most of their time in government they didn't have a housing minister.

They barely built a home for Australians to live in. Perhaps one day they might walk into this place—the National Party might too—with a plan to get young people into a home of their own. I'm all ears.

I'd love to hear it. Young Australians would love to hear your plan to get Aussies into their first home, but you don't have one. Instead, you come in here and you call our scheme a failure.

You tie us up in OPDs. You complain. You stand in the way of our agenda.

That's all a way of hiding the fact that you don't have a plan. Young Australians know it. It's why they're not interested in voting for the Liberal and National parties at the moment: they know you're not interested in listening to them about what they want from government, about what they need from us in these times, which are challenging.

Saving for a home deposit is not easy, and we don't want— Senator WHITEAKER: Exactly! I'm going to take that interjection from Senator Allman-Payne. Rents are high, and that's why we don't want young Australians to have to keep renting and paying rent to the Liberal and National's property investor mates.

That's what this entire scheme is about. This entire scheme is about making it more affordable for young Australians to get into their own home. Australians have saved more than $2.5 billion in LMI under our home deposit scheme.

That's money that could have been going to the banks; that's money that, if the Liberals and Nationals had their way, would have been going to the banks in LMI. Instead, hundreds of thousands of Australians can be proud of the fact that they have a home of their own. The average first home buyer purchasing a national median priced home with a five per cent deposit are saving just over $23,000 in LMI.

That is not a failure. Our government is proud of the work that we have done to help Australians get into their own home, and we will continue to do it day after day.