Amy:
My question is for the minister. Minister, the Queensland Audit Office report states that the 6,365 builds planned to commence by 2025 will help increase social housing supply, however, it will not be enough to keep up with increasing demand. Why does the Palaszczuk government not have a plan to keep up with demand?


Minister Housing: 
I thank the member for the question. Obviously we are not the only player in this space. We are investing a record amount of funding. It is the largest concentrated investment in social and affordable housing in Queensland’s history. We are also very pleased to see now an Albanese Labor government at the federal level where we have seen actual commitment to social and affordable housing at that level.

What we saw previous to the election from the former LNP federal government was a stripping of funding from our social housing portfolio. It was about $100 million from our agreement over that period. From my experience, there was very little appetite to work with the state on increasing the amount of social and affordable housing. I am very pleased to see that the Albanese Labor government has committed that $10 billion Housing Investment Fund and that that will see 30,000 social and affordable homes across the country.

Certainly from the conversations that I have already had with the new housing minister, it has
been a breath of fresh air to actually have some kind of collaboration happening. It was fantastic to
meet with all of the housing ministers recently where we saw every single housing minister across the
country highlight the challenges that we are all facing in this space. But, of course, we are under the
same constraints that every other state and territory is under. We have had mass migration into the
state, we continue to see supply chain issues.
Just yesterday I turned the sod on another 37-unit complex on the Gold Coast where I was
speaking to the builders and they were raising concerns about being able to get concrete. This is a
story that is happening right across the state: access to supplies of concrete, timber trusses et cetera,
et cetera. All of those things are providing extra challenges, compounding challenges. But, of course,
we continue to look for interim short-term measures as well as getting that build underway, ensuring
that not only are we building as many as we can out of our record investment, but that we will get our
fair share out of the federal government’s Housing Investment Fund as well and I think that is a really
important part of the equation going forward.