A week out from Labor's post-election reset federal budget, Ms Collins is heading to Ginninderry on Tuesday to support the build-to-rent-to-buy initiative designed with two tiers of government and investors to help vulnerable and at risk women become homeowners.

In an interview in ACM, publisher of this newspaper, the woman tasked with fixing the nation's housing crisis has defended the Labor government's decision not to waive the ACT's historical $100 million housing debt and said she was "not ruling anything out", even when presented with the Liberals' election plan to sell a large parcel of CSIRO land in Canberra's northern suburbs to unlock possibly 2000 affordable new homes.

With land supply a significant problem in the ACT, the Chief Minister Andrew Barr was also supportive of moves to free up Commonwealth land in the territory for housing.

"I'm not particularly looking at that. But I'm not ruling anything out," Ms Collins said.

"We are looking at all projects and types of innovation, but we really need to be working better together and innovating and trying to leverage as much as we possibly can."

While Mr Albanese has promised equality for women will be at the budget's heart, the delivery of Labor's housing promises - the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, the Help to Buy scheme and the regional first home buyer support scheme - are expected to be a key focus of Treasurer Jim Chalmers' "bread and butter" budget on Tuesday night.

The plan is to build 30,000 social and affordable homes in the first five years of the fund, although the opposition has criticised it as being uncosted and without detail. Actual construction may be a year away.

"What we saw with our election commitments from the Albanese government is a very broad suite of policies that are ambitious. They are going to be difficult to deliver on but we want to deliver on them and I'm incredibly passionate about making sure that we do deliver on them," Ms Collins said.

"I spent my early childhood in broad-acre public housing. I know the Prime Minister personally, of course, has told his story about growing up in public housing.

"We realise how important this is not just from anecdotal stuff, but because we've lived it. We understand that it's more than just a roof over your head. It's about having a safe place to call home. It's about a community. It's about being able to participate."

Legislation for the Future Fund is expected be brought before Parliament before the end of the year, while Ms Collins was expecting homes would start to be built by the second half of 2023.

She insisted the government realised there was an urgency to get homes on the ground faster, but they "need to be the right homes in the right places", while there were supply chains and workforce constraints in the construction industry.

Ms Collins has defended the decision, confirmed last week by Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, not to consider any deals, like those under the previous Coalition government, to waive the ACT's historical $100 million housing debt to free up social housing.

"The thing around the historic housing debt is, of course, is that across the board, there's about over $1 billion that the states and territories still have in that debt," she said.

"And what we want to do obviously, is have the Housing Australian Future Fund and we want to work with states and territories to leverage and to get more homes on the ground in the best possible way. That's what our focus is, it's delivering on our election commitments, and we want to get more homes on the ground faster."

Independent ACT senator David Pocock has promised to do "everything possible to see this debt forgiven".

In the meantime, Ms Collins said there was also a need for national leadership to tackle Australia's housing crisis. During the election campaign, Labor promised to establish a national housing supply and affordability council to work with states and territories on supply, demand and affordability. There's also a commitment to strike a national housing and homelessness plan.

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Collaboration and consensus was key, according to the minister.

"The only way that we're going to be able to actually improve housing affordability is to have the three tiers of government work in the heading in the same direction, but also to have social housing providers, the construction sector, developers, investors, everybody on the same page; that's what we really need," Ms Collins said.

"We're hearing stories. It's harder to buy a home, it's harder to rent a home and too many Australians don't have somewhere safe and affordable to call home and we need to do better."