Ms PAYNE (Canberra) (15:39): This is a really important MPI about the housing crisis currently facing Australia, so I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to talk about some of the policies that our government is putting in place. Last week was national Homelessness Week, a week which raises awareness of homelessness in Australia and the importance of social and affordable housing as a long-term solution. Of course, in a country like Australia, everyone should have a safe place to call home, and this is something that our government is working on.
To mark the week, I visited the Early Morning Centre here in my electorate on Northbourne Avenue and talked to Nicole Wiggins, who runs the Early Morning Centre, to hear about how they're going with their service, which provides vital support to people experiencing homelessness in Canberra. They provide food, but they also provide services and link people up with a range of supports there at their place at the Uniting Church. I'm proud to have engaged with them regularly over the five years I've been an MP, but before I was in parliament I was a regular volunteer there for a long time.
Before that, I volunteered for many years at another organisation, talking with people experiencing homelessness. I think understanding the issues that can lead anyone into homelessness and the accompanying problems that people then experience gives a powerful example of why a home is so important. For anyone to build their life and have a happy, healthy and fulfilled life, it must start with the security of a place to call home.
Those experiences of talking with those people are a big part of what led me to want to be in politics and be part of governments that are going to fix these problems. While there are many in our community doing amazing work, like the Early Morning Centre and the volunteers there—and I want to quickly shout out to everyone in Canberra that is supporting people facing homelessness—it is governments that have a really important role in ensuring that people can find a place to call home. That's why I'm so proud that that is exactly what we've seen from the Albanese Labor government.
A few weeks ago I was really proud to join the former housing minister Julie Collins and also our ACT housing minister Yvette Berry to visit some new public housing in my electorate which had recently been completed and was ready to go in the inner north. We heard about how soon some Canberrans would be moving into that excellent housing. It was well designed, with beautiful, bright homes in a great location. We just heard the new minister talking about more of these dwellings that are going to be opened in Canberra shortly. It's projects like this that are being built all across the nation as part of our $32 billion Homes for Australia plan.
Additionally, our government and state and territory governments have recently signed a new agreement on social housing and homelessness. That agreement will see the ACT receive $157 million in funding to boost their construction program and build scores of new, additional public homes. This is what happens when you have the different levels of government working hand in hand together to address a crisis affecting Australians.
We all know that there is a shortage of housing, and we know that we need to build more homes quickly all around the country. That's why one of the first things we did when we came to government was sign the once-in-a-generation National Housing Accord with the states and territories, with the ambitious goal of building 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade. It will be the most homes that have been built in our history. To date, the government has invested $32 billion to build those new homes. In fact, in the last budget alone, there was more money for new homes than in all of the budgets of the former government combined.
Our government is providing national leadership on this issue. We're funding and incentivising states and territories to get more homes built. We're training more tradies, funding more apprenticeships and growing the workforce. We're delivering the biggest investment in social housing in more than a decade to help reduce homelessness. For people who are renting, we've increased rent assistance, and for those looking to buy for the first time we've assisted more than 110,000 Australians through the Home Guarantee Scheme.
There's always more we can do, and I know that, when I'm talking to my community here in Canberra, housing is of course an issue at front of mind, but I am proud to be part of a government that also has this at front of mind and is working to get homes for Australians.
