In a recent social media post, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil shared a video in which she spoke about the “broken housing market” and how it was hurting Australians.

There is a full transcript of the video at the bottom of the article.

“You’re either on the side of change and you’re on the side of first home buyers or you’re the last man standing defending a broken housing market in our country.”

This is rather an ironic twist on the narrative from O’Neil given her previous commentary on the issue.

In December 2024, O’Neil was interviewed by ABC’s Triple J and stated in no uncertain terms that the government wanted continued rises in housing prices.

https://x.com/AvidCommentator/status/1866282913308062175

Here is a transcript of the relevant part of the interview.

What is the goal here in terms of these policies? Is it to bring down house prices?

We want to bring housing price growth into something sustainable. So we are not trying to bring down house prices.

But we don’t want to see some of the growth that we’ve seen in some parts of the country, where you are getting double-digit increases in house prices year-on-year.