Answers to questions: Housing
Senator GROGAN: This is a fascinating discussion that we're having here. Maybe I'm rising here to offend Senator Collins. It's not my intent, but claiming that those of us over here are stuck in a Canberra bubble and there's been no sales and no builds of housing is, quite frankly, blatantly untrue. This is the problem: the debate that we are having is one that is being characterised on one side, over there, by our colleagues, as one where nothing is happening and that we're trashing the market. Yet, what we are seeing is people getting an opportunity. We believe that a home should primarily be a home, not primarily for wealth generation, investment or a tax break. We believe that people deserve safe, reliable homes, whether that be rentals or whether that be a purchase. We have worked to rebalance the market.
In fact, since we were elected in 2022, real, tangible progress has been made. We have shifted the dial. We put $47 billion on the table. That's what our plan has committed: $47 billion, while they over there, the coalition, didn't have a housing minister for most of the nine years they were in government. That's hardly a commitment. They built less than 400 homes. I hardly think that they've got much ground to stand on in this debate other than to perpetuate rubbish, which is what we have heard quite a lot of this afternoon.
We know that the new ABS data is showing that building approvals have gone up by nine per cent in the last financial year. They're not down, not flatlining, but up by nine per cent. We're seeing the evidence of the turnaround on our investment. I might just take you to a very specific example in my home state of South Australia. I'm a very proud South Australian, and I think the work that the Albanese Labor government has done with the Malinauskas government in South Australia is leading this country. We know that it's not just about building the houses but about the enabling infrastructure. The announcement made earlier this year by our governments in the federal and the state space has unlocked 17,000 new homes. That's about understanding the environment—our urban fringe into our regions—where people need housing, but we need that enabling infrastructure to make it happen. With a solution focus, with a positive focus, with an overwhelming desire to help people find their own homes, to help them live in safe and secure environments whether they are renting or buying—this is the kind of outcome we need to see, and this is exactly what we've been doing.
I would say to my colleagues on the other side of this chamber: have a long, hard look at the reality as opposed to the ideological political spin, because you are protecting your wealthy mates and your property investors, and you don't give a rat's pyjamas about the people on the ground who are telling us that this is exactly what they need. They are getting into housing, they are getting into rentals and they are actually starting to see the future. Grandparents and parents are actually now starting to see that their children are going to have an opportunity, which for years—almost a decade of that lot in government—they could not see, as this crisis loomed.