REPRESENTATIVE OF HOUSES Anthony Albanese has pledged $10 billion in his budget reply speech for a housing future fund aimed at delivering 20,000 social housing properties across its first five years, with the ABC explaining about 10,000 houses would be set aside for frontline workers and another 4000 for women and families escaping domestic violence. Returns from the fund would go towards maintaining homes in remote Indigenous communities, crisis accommodation, and specialist services for veterans experiencing homelessness. Albanese further pledged $100 million over four years for cash payments to 10,000 apprentices working in “new energy” areas such as rooftop solar, energy efficiency upgrades and green hydrogen, and to criminalise wage theft, arguing the Coalition had behaved “like an eight-year-old child” who “threw a tantrum” by dumping wage theft provisions in its industrial relations package earlier this year.