Minister Collins interview on Sunrise

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

HOST: Joining us now is the Minister for Housing, Julie Collins. Julie, thank you very much for being with us. Minister, could you just explain for people who are watching here there? There’s a lot of confusion around the schemes – First Home Guarantee scheme, Family Guarantee scheme – what they want to know is how do we benefit from these new changes?

JULIE COLLINS, MINISTER FOR HOUSING: What these schemes are about is helping people into homeownership. They’re about helping people overcome the barrier of the 20 per cent deposit. It means that a pair can afford to get into homeownership sooner. They can, with as little as 5 per cent deposit, be helped into homeownership. What happens is the federal government guarantees the other 15 per cent, so they don’t have to pay Lenders Mortgage Insurance, and this saves people tens of thousands of dollars. When it comes to singles with as little as 2 per cent deposit, for single parents getting into homeownership. So the expansion of these programs will get more people into homeownership and will support more people into getting into their home.

HOST: How many people?

COLLINS: Well, what we’re talking about here is a program that across the three programs – the Family Home Guarantee, the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee, and the First Home Guarantee – is really 50,000 across the country. What we’ve done is we’ve targeted it. There’s also income caps and purchase caps. And there is a cap on the number, so that we don’t impact house prices, but that we help a reasonable amount of Australians that currently have that barrier of saving for a 20 per cent deposit into homeownership sooner.

We also, of course, are trying to get people that may have through some unfortunate circumstances – perhaps they lost their job, perhaps they’ve got divorced – who had been locked out of homeownership for decades. We’re saying that if you’ve been locked out of homeownership for more than 10 years, that we think you should be able to access this scheme.

HOST: Minister, it is it certainly it is a good change. But if you look at the enormity of the problem in Australia, and how many Australians – we’re talking millions that are trying to get in – does this cover enough? Does this help enough people?

COLLINS: This is obviously part of a really broad suite of reforms that the Albanese Labor Government has done. Just this week we’ve announced in the Budget an additional $2 billion in financing for our finance investment corporation to invest with community housing providers into more social and affordable homes. We of course, have our Housing Australia Future Fund Bill, which is currently in the Senate. And I’d say to Liberal senators and to Greens senators who are out there listening today, that they should support this bill. We’re talking about $10 billion being invested, and the returns going every year to social and affordable homes. And our National Housing Accord – we’re talking about more affordable homes going in for Australians. We had announcements about build to rent and depreciations just this week, so we can get more rental homes onto the market.

HOST: Yes, okay. Sorry to interrupt you there, Minister. We’re just running out of time. What’s your plan B that if it does get blocked?

COLLINS: Well, what we want to do, of course, is work right across the Parliament. We’re still having discussions. But as I’ve said, we have a broad suite of policies. We are at every opportunity supporting more Australians into housing. We can’t turn around almost a decade of neglect from the former government in just a year. But we are working very, very hard to turn this around as quickly as we can – working with the industry, working with the sector, working with community housing providers and working with state, territory and local governments. No tier of government’s going to solve the housing issues in Australia immediately or alone. And we want to work with everybody and get on with the job of getting more Australians in a safe, affordable place to call home.

HOST: People don’t – you’re right, Minister. People don’t expect it to happen immediately. But they are hoping it will happen soon. That $2 billion to assist with affordable housing, how long will that take to flow through?

COLLINS: That’ll fly through from the first of July. We’ve already unlocked from last year $575 million. We already have projects that we have announced that are underway today because we immediately, when we came to government, unlocked that $575 million. In the first week of this year, I announced one in Adelaide. I’ve announced some in New South Wales. I have been going around the country, we have been making announcements because we know how critical this is. But importantly, construction is underway so that we can get more Australians into homes as quickly as possible.

When we talk about the Housing Australia Future Fund, we’re talking about 30,000 social and affordable homes in the first five years of the fund. 4000 of those we’re going to allocate women and children fleeing family violence, and to older women at risk of homelessness. So I’d say to the other parties, we have a very broad housing agenda. We’re getting on with the job, and they should get out of the way and they should support the bill in the Senate.

HOST: Often it doesn’t happen that way though, Minister. For the, for the people are queuing it rental homes today and they’re thinking, ‘goodness, how is this going to help in the short term’? Well, can you ever see a day in this country where a rental freeze would be imposed or would work?

COLLINS: We obviously want to support the 35 per cent of Australians that are renting today, which is why we want to add to supply. The best thing we can do for renters is work with states and territories and local governments to work on supply. To get more homes on the ground more quickly. What we haven’t done in this country, in the past, is build enough homes. What we’ve seen coming out of the pandemic is everybody wants more space, which is putting more pressure on the housing market. We also, of course, have a National Housing Accord, where we’re talking about an additional – on top of all of that – another 10,000 affordable rentals to be matched by states and territories with another 10,000. So that’s 20,000. And we’re talking about an aspirational target of working with everybody for 1 million homes over five years from the first of July 2024. So we do know we’ve got a big job ahead of us and we’re talking short term, medium term and long term here. We need to turn this around, and we’re working as quickly as we can to do.

HOST: Okay, a lot more to play out here. Thank you very much. Julie Collins.

COLLINS: Thank you very much.

ENDS