PM Anthony Albanese confirms Labor’s ‘Help to Buy’ scheme will start nationwide in 2024

Aussies will be able to buy their first home with the cost of their initial deposit shared by the federal government, as the PM confirms Labor’s ‘Help to Buy’ scheme will start next year.

Australians will be able to buy their first home with the cost of their initial deposit shared by the federal government, as Anthony Albanese confirms Labor’s ‘Help to Buy’ scheme will start next year.

The shared equity proposal was announced during the 2022 election campaign, but Labor has so-far not moved toward implementing the scheme with legislation.

The Prime Minister confirmed Help to Buy would launch “nationwide” from 2024 during an address to loyalists for the opening of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) national conference in Brisbane on Thursday.

“Our government will help 40,000 low and middle income families buy a home of their own,” he said.

Under the original scheme eligible home buyers would be able to purchase a home with as little as a two per cent deposit, which would allow the government to essentially co-purchase up to 40 per cent of the new home.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Labor’s Help to Buy scheme will start next year. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

Help to Buy, costed at $329 million during last year’s campaign, was heavily criticised by the Coalition as a proposal that would result in the government “owning part of your home”.

But Mr Albanese said the scheme would fit in with Labor’s other housing policies, including the new $3 billion incentive scheme that would give states and territories $15,000 for every house they built above their share of the previously agreed one million new houses over five years.

Over the next three days more than 2,000 people will gather at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre to debate and watch as 402 delegates with voting rights shape Labor’s policy platform – widely seen as the blueprint for Mr Albanese’s re-election bid.

Labor under pressure on native forest logging, Jobseeker, abortion access and climate

Interest groups have seized on the gathering to highlight their own causes and apply pressure on the Albanese Government over a range of issues from social services to climate change and industrial relations.

On Thursday the Australian Services Union is expected to seek to change the party’s platform to specific that “keeping people out of poverty will be central to future changes in the social security system”.

The push has been welcomed by the Australian Council of Social Services, who used the first day of the conference to publish a new Ipsos poll showing 66 per cent of Labor voters in three inner-Melbourne seats – Cooper, Wills and Macnamara – believed the current rate of Jobseeker was too low.

Protesters at ALP National Conference at South Brisbane, Thursday, August 17, 2023 – Picture: Richard Walker

ACOSS chief executive Cassandra Goldie said the Albanese must increase income support payments such as Jobseeker, which is currently $56 a day, to at least $76.

“The cost of living crisis is dire for people living on poverty level income support payments and urgent action is required,” she said.

Environmental advocates have also sought to use the focus on Labor’s conference to push the government toward a ban on native forest logging.

The Australia Institute released research showing seven in ten Australians supported extending bans to NSW and Tasmania.

“These results show the time is right for Labor’s National Conference to amend its platform to support an end to native forest logging nationwide,” Australian Institute deputy director Ebony Bennett said.

“We are in the midst of a climate crisis and ending native forest logging makes sense from a social, environmental, economic and biodiversity perspective.”

Pacific Climate Warriors’ Queensland co-ordinator Mary Maselina Harm said she would use platform speaking on a panel at the conference on Labor’s bid for Australia to host the 31st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP31) to push Labor to go further on climate.

“To host the UN climate talks with the Pacific, Australia must show true climate leadership,” she said.

“For Pacific Island countries, this is a fight for survival. Either fossil fuels have a future, or we do.”

Social issues will also feature in the debates on the floor of the conference, with a group of pro-choice MPs planning to move a motion to allow free abortion throughout Australia, including free travel to clinics and support for women without Medicare.

Ahead of the conference, Christian Voice Australia national director Greg Bondar criticised the proposal, calling on Labor not to enshrine the motion as party policy.

CFMEU workers union march to the Brisbane Convention Centre where the ALP national conference is taking place. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

Protests cause traffic havoc ahead of Labor conference

As delegates debated motions on the conference floor, outside on the streets a number of protests gathered on a range of issues from climate to workplace safety, cost of living and housing.

Thousands of CFMEU members held a raucous protest outside Brisbane’s convention centre just as the conference was due to begin, demanding an end to the housing crisis and for the use of engineered stone to be banned.

CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith, speaking to the crowd, said workers “can’t let the Labor Party forget they were founded on the working class”.

“We have a product, engineered stone, one in four workers are dying in their prime. That is a death sentence. Will our political class accept that figure,” he said.

Climate change activists also gathered outside the venue just 20 metres away from the union protest, calling on Labor to “end the climate emergency” by stopping its promotion of fossil fuels.