Anthony Albanese delivers budget reply speech – as it happened

Labor has proved once again why it can’t even be trusted with a calculator let alone the economy.

For Anthony Albanese’s so-called Housing Australia Future Fund to work he is going to need to extract 20% annual returns from the fund.

In other words, Labor will need to more than triple the current benchmark return for the Future Fund of 6.1% to be able to deliver his 20,000 dwellings.

Australians will be rightly asking themselves after tonight where they too can get a 20% return.

In what would shock many, Labor’s policy would only deliver one-sixth of the homes at four times the price when compared to the Morrison government’s successful homebuilder program.

In addition, the Morrison government’s National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation is already delivering more than 10,000 social and affordable homes for 40% of the cost.

What 58,000 teachers, 42,000 nurses and 19,000 police should be worried about is Labor’s $31bn housing tax*.

Homebuilder has delivered for homeowners and the construction industry alike, supporting around $39bn in residential building activity, more than 350,000 full-time jobs and $114bn into economy. As part of the Morrison government plan to secure Australia’s recovery, we’re helping more Australians to own their home sooner with policies that actually deliver.

In the 2021-22 budget the government announced it would:

In the budget the government also provided an additional $124.7m in funding to allow the states and territories to bolster public housing stocks, or to meet their social and community housing responsibilities under the 2011 Fair Work decision on Social and Community Services wages.

Only the Morrison government understands the importance of owning your own home and the significant economic and social benefits home ownership provides.