JULIE COLLINS:
It's great to be out here this morning to be able to talk about the 110,000 people that the Australian Government has helped into home ownership since the Albanese Labor government came to office. We're talking about 110,000 people that we've now helped into home ownership through the Home Guarantee Scheme. That is an average of 1,000 people a week since we came to office. This is a significant increase, and it's because of the expansion and the changes we made to help more Australians into home ownership through the Home Guarantee Scheme.
And of course, we want to do more with Help to Buy, the shared equity scheme. That would assist 40,000 additional Australians into home ownership through shared equity. That legislation will be back in the parliament in May in the Senate, and what I would say to the Liberals and to the Greens is they should be supporting this shared equity scheme, so that we can get more Australians into home ownership. We know that far too many Australians have housing challenges. We know that many Australians still have a dream of owning their own home. What we want to do as a government is help more Australians into their dream home. We want to help more Australians into home ownership. We want to help more Australians into homes right across the board.
We are investing over $25 billion in additional investments since we came to office over the next decade into housing. We're working with our counterparts in the states and territories, so that we can build more homes of every type right across Australia – more social homes, more affordable homes, more homes for people to purchase. Right across the board, we have an ambitious national target of 1.2 million homes from 1 July over 5 years. We are working right across government to meet that target. We know that this is ambitious. We need to be ambitious as a country. We need to build more homes for Australians that need them. And what I would say – as I said – is when Help to Buy our shared equity scheme comes back to the Parliament, the Greens and the Liberals should be supporting that legislation so we can help more Australians into home ownership.
JOURNALIST:
What are the chances that you actually meet your target?
COLLINS:
We're working right across government. We're working with the Skills and Training Minister, with the Industry Minister on alternative methods of construction and supply chains. Right across government, we need to build more homes in Australia. We've traditionally had less homes than the OECD average. We need to lift that, and we need a pipeline of construction to give certainty to people to invest. But importantly, we need certainty so that we can train more Australians into the great trades. There are many Australians that want to be a tradie. We need to make sure that there's a constant supply of work. What we need is less stop start in the construction sector, and more continual growth in the construction sector. We need to reach that target. It is ambitious – it needs to be.
JOURNALIST:
Can I ask you a few things on some other stuff? [crosstalk] I’ll start with that spending. The Mercury has some figures today that your office was the biggest spender of the federal MPs. Is that just because of your ministerial workload?
COLLINS:
Well, obviously as Minister for Housing and Minister for Small Business, I do need to get out and about right across the country. You know, I'd obviously like to spend more time at home. My job means I need to travel around the country. You would see that a high proportion of that is indeed also staff travel. I know that this is taxpayers’ money. I do everything I can to keep my expenditure as low as possible. The realities of being a Cabinet Minister do mean that I am required to travel every week, and often multiple states in a week.
JOURNALIST:
At a state level, we're talking about how difficult it is for the state government to build social and affordable houses at an acceptable rate. Given that that's happening there, how likely is it that the federal government can actually get ahead and build the houses that we need?
COLLINS:
Well we, of course, have the Housing Australia Future Fund that we got through the Parliament. We're talking there about 30,000 social and affordable homes. We, of course, have the National Housing Accord and we have our additional billion dollar investment into Housing Australia. We have said that Housing Australia needs to be investing in a minimum of 1,200 homes in Tasmania across the first 5 years. That is what we expect to see. We're working cooperatively with states and territories. When I talked to state governments, including the Tasmanian state government, they all say to me it's great to have a federal government back at the wheel when it comes to housing. It's great to have a federal government that's working with us, instead of blaming us.
JOURNALIST:
Do you think – Dean Winter’s put his hand up to the Labor leadership at a state level. Do you think he’d be a good next leader of the Labor Party?
COLLINS:
Oh look, I want to congratulate everybody that got elected in the state election. Now we know that this Parliament is going to be very varied. I would say to my state colleagues and even new state colleagues, they need to make this work in the interest of Tasmanians. The matter of the leadership of the parliamentary Labor Party I'm sure will be decided by the parliamentary Labor Party. We have some talented people in our caucus. Obviously, you know, I was a big supporter of Rebecca White. I’ll work with whomever is the leader of the Labor Party – Dean Winter and others. We've got a lot of talent in the Labor Party.
JOURNALIST:
So you think Dean Winter would be a good next leader of the Labor Party?
COLLINS:
I'll leave that up to the parliamentary Labor Party. As you know, Dean used to work for me. You know, so there is a lot of talent in the parliamentary Labor Party and I'm sure that they'll go through their appropriate process. I mean, counting still hasn't finished yet. It will finish today and we'll get those final seats sorted, and then we'll move on and resolve the leadership issue.
JOURNALIST:
[crosstalk] behind me here who is laughing, you can hear Josh Willie, people talking about maybe he should have a shot. Do you think he'd be a good candidate? Should he have a go?
COLLINS:
Well, as I said, we've got a lot of talent in our state Labor Party. Josh is talented – you know, they’re a talented team, our state parliamentary Labor Party, and I'm sure they'll be holding the government – whatever it looks like – to account.
JOURNALIST:
GJ Gardner has just collapsed in Tasmania. It's going to affect a lot of contractors and homeowners. Will there be any federal government support for those affected?
COLLINS:
Look, I feel for the tradies and the subbies who are not going to get paid. I feel for the homeowners whose lives have been wrecked by the collapse of this housing company, GJ Gardner Homes, here in Tasmania. You know, this impacts people here in Tassie, but we have seen this around the country unfortunately. The former federal government commissioned a review called the Murray Review. It was released in 2018. There are 86 recommendations. Only one of them is for the federal government. Most of the roles and responsibilities here are at the state level. Again, what we want to do is work with states and territories to address those recommendations. Clearly, there are things that need to be done at the state level and the state government, the former state government, had been working on some things. Clearly, they need to do a bit more, and clearly we need to protect consumers and the tradies.
JOURNALIST:
Just one on Gaza. The Foreign Minister and Defence Minister say they’re dissatisfied with the IDF’s explanation of how the airstrikes on the aid convoy happened. What more does the government want to get out of the IDF?
COLLINS:
Look, we've been very clear – we want full accountability and transparency for what happened. We're talking about humanitarian aid workers here. We're talking about an Australian who went overseas to help others in need. We need full accountability and transparency. That is our expectation. We've been very clear that that is our expectation.
JOURNALIST:
And you don't feel like that's happening to this point?
COLLINS:
We want full accountability and transparency.
JOURNALIST:
Thanks so much.