PM: We're here at Tullamarine today to announce the completion of the first units of social housing delivered under the Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan for Victoria.
This project itself involves some $650,000 through the stimulus plan, providing affordable housing for three tenants, and we've just seen that, and it's really good to see the difference it's making in people's lives.
I'm told, from Tanya just before, that we've had one hundred and...
PLIBERSEK: Oh, 110 people on site.
PM: 110 people on site.
PLIBERSEK: And 19 apprentices.
PM: And 19 apprentices and that is a good thing.
And these projects are now, with the Government's support, and the State Governments support, springing up right across Victoria and right across Australia.
When you put this together with the Building the Education Revolution Program, we are making difference to the economy, but we're also making a difference to people's lives and to the education of our kids as well.
The important thing is that with each of these constructions, there's a number of trades that are concentrated on site - tradies such as carpenters, electricians, brickies, carpet layers, painters, kitchen manufacturers and the lot, working hard, working together to build projects and supporting local jobs.
Here in Victoria, our social housing initiative is worth $1.6 billion, and is on schedule to meet the objective of completing 75% of properties by the end of 2010. Stage 1 involved 667 dwellings at a cost of $171 million, Stage 2 992 dwellings worth $218 million, and they've already been approved and are ahead of the August deadline.
We're also investing in the maintenance and repair work on a further 50,000 units of existing social housing. Tanya was advising me before that of that 50,000, 10,600 would be lost to the total stock of available social housing were it not for these repairs.
Put those numbers together, it actually makes a big difference in terms of overall demand for social housing in Australia.