Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on the Defence Home Ownership Assistance Scheme Amendment Bill 2022. Australians owe a debt of gratitude to our veterans. When a person enlists in the ADF, they commit to serve their country and the people of Australia, whether in wars, conflicts, peacekeeping or disaster support. I am pleased to have RAAF Base Amberley in my electorate. It's a beloved institution. The people there are greatly valued. In return, as a grateful nation, we have responsibilities to serve and look after defence personnel, whether serving or subsequent.

Housing affordability is one of the biggest challenges facing Australians today, and it's harder to buy a house today than ever before. Defence personnel and veterans are not immune to this and often face unique challenges when it comes to buying their own home. Homeownership levels within the ADF have traditionally been low due to the nature of service, including the frequency of posting cycles throughout Australia and a high operational tempo with overseas deployments in recent years. This bill also responds to the struggles experienced by veterans and the role that housing can play in their greater wellbeing. We've seen with the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide the effect that homelessness has had on the mental wellbeing of veterans throughout the country. In a recent report, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that safe, secure and affordable housing is fundamental to veterans' wellbeing.

Labor has always understood these issues, and we have a strong record of providing housing support for our service men and women. The Hawke-Keating Labor government, under the great Minister for Defence, Kim Beazley, created Defence Housing Australia in 1987 to provide high-quality housing for defence members throughout the country. Despite coalition threats to sell off DHA over the years, its services remain very popular with defence members. It was the Rudd Labor government that established the Defence Home Ownership Assistance Scheme, DHOAS, in 2008 to promote homeownership through a monthly subsidy on mortgage interest payments for eligible defence personnel and veterans. This replaced the former Defence Home Ownership Scheme set up by the Hawke-Keating government in 1991 to assist current and former ADF members to purchase their homes.

These initiatives also recognise that housing entitlements are a key recruitment and retention tool. It's a welfare and support measure, as evidence to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide clearly demonstrates. It's also a recruitment and retention measure. Every year, one in 10 people separate from their employment in the ADF. It's a goal—a bipartisan goal—to increase the size of the ADF, and we are currently falling behind when it comes to annual recruitment of ADF members. The proposal, which is supported by both sides of politics, is to increase the ADF workforce by 30 per cent to 80,000 members by 2040. This measure in this bill is key in that proposal.

Over the years, DHOAS has proved very popular, with more than 30,000 ADF members accessing support totalling $395 million, paid in subsidies from 2008 to 2014. Recent Defence annual reports show continuing interest in the scheme, with 6,123 applicants processed and 3,602 subsidy payments made in 2020-21.

When we were in opposition, Labor received a lot of feedback from ADF members that defence housing entitlements simply weren't effective, given the current state of the housing market, including in places like Ipswich, Townsville and Brisbane, and they suggested that there needed to be more support for homeownership, relative to accommodation entitlements. In addition, some veterans told us that their access to housing and homeownership specifically would support their transition back to civilian life after they'd left the ADF. That's why, as the former shadow minister for veterans' affairs and defence personnel, I was proud to announce that an incoming Labor government would boost homeownership for defence personnel and veterans by expanding eligibility criteria for the DHOAS.

The changes we announced which are the subject of this bill will improve access to homeownership for defence personnel early in their defence careers and allow veterans to access the scheme at any time after they've completed their service. These improvements will be greatly appreciated. The bill also makes amendments to the Defence Home Ownership Assistance Scheme Act 2008 which aim to improve homeownership levels amongst serving defence personnel and members of the veterans community by: (1) reducing the qualifying service period for defence members to access the scheme; (2) reducing the required period of effective service to access subsidy tier levels; and (3) removing the current five-year post-separation time frame for accessing the scheme.

The bill also makes a range of amendments that will improve the operation of the scheme, including creating a power to declare that a subsidised loan was not paid down where it was the result of a genuine error, mistake or accident; creating a mechanism to make relevant payments, including overpayments, otherwise not authorised by the act; and creating a mechanism to recover relevant payments that are not overpayments. In short, we're reducing or removing the minimum service requirement for each subsidy tier from 1 January 2023, by halving the minimum service required for access for current defence personnel from four years to two years for permanent service, and from eight years to four years for reserve service, and by removing the access cap altogether for veterans who've left the service. This will be greatly appreciated and is a particularly good improvement to the scheme.

I know that this will make a huge difference to current and former service personnel in my electorate of Blair, which has one of the largest defence and veterans communities in the country, being home to the RAAF base at Amberley, the largest Air Force base in the country, and home to many Army units as well. As an example of the benefits of the expanded DHOAS, an aviator based at Amberley for two years might expect to access the scheme with a subsidised loan of $402,159 and a maximum monthly interest rate subsidy of up to $422, based on current arrangements. On top of this, any ADF personnel and veterans buying a home in, say, a regional centre like Townsville or Darwin will be able to access the government's Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee, which will help 10,000 regional Australians enter their first home every year with a deposit of as little as five per cent.

Importantly, the bill allows veterans to apply for their final subsidy certificate at any time after they've separated from the Defence Force, removing the current five-year limitation. It's very welcome that this amendment has been extended to surviving partners who have similarly been impacted by the death of a member, which acknowledges that families in the Defence Force can be deeply affected by military service.

Altogether, the bill reinforces and furthers the Albanese Labor government's commitment to homeownership for defence members and veterans, as well as to veteran wellbeing, and it assists with recruitment and retention in the ADF. This commitment is why the government's first budget, handed down on 25 October, includes $46.2 million over four years to support these changes. We are introducing a bill and we're backing it up with the money. We know that housing entitlements are a key recruitment and retention tool, so reforms to DHOAS will help to meet our ADF workforce targets. The bill assists in positioning the ADF as an employer of choice, assisting serving members and veterans to buy a home and ensuring the scheme can be administered as efficiently, effectively and beneficially as possible.

Before the election, the Morrison government announced the largest increase in the ADF since the Vietnam War. It did that in March 2022. Labor was happy to back that in. We absolutely agree that in these challenging times, particularly in the Indo Pacific, we need to enlarge the ADF. We need to have a bigger, stronger and larger permanent ADF. The problem is that the coalition government failed to provide any details as to how it was going to achieve this. We haven't been hitting the targets and we weren't hitting those targets, going forward, that we needed to in the last nine years. That's why the Labor government committed to undertaking a comprehensive review of ADF recruitment and retention measures to ensure our armed forces have the personnel they need to keep Australia safe and defend our national interests—no more hollowing out of the military.

I am pleased to see that, since the election of the Albanese government, defence has been a priority. We have initiated an urgent review into our ambitious defence workforce targets and recruitment and retention practices, noting that acute skills shortages are being experienced across many sectors of the country, not just in the ADF. At the end of the day, our greatest defence capability is our people, and measures like supporting housing and homeownership will be vitally important to growing and sustaining our ADF. This policy is based on consultation and discussions by caucus members—I know I did so much of it myself during that period—with ADF members, whether it was in Adelaide, Melbourne or Townsville—or in Ipswich or Brisbane, which I undertook, and I'm pleased that the minister has undertaken similar consultation. There was consultation with veterans housing providers. I remember a very important meeting I had with RSL Care in South Australia to discuss this issue, and I thank them for their input when we were in opposition and thank the minister for the work he's doing in government. I'm pleased to see that several ex-service organisations have been consulted on this bill since the election and are supportive of these reforms. I note that the member for Herbert and the shadow minister for veterans' affairs have provided feedback on the scheme, and I welcome that. I welcome the fact that the Leader of the Opposition expressed strong support for this bill in his budget reply speech. Bipartisan support is really important.

These changes are due to commence on 1 January 2023, so I applaud the assistant minister for defence and veterans' affairs for bringing this bill forward to ensure that can happen. It's vital we pass this legislation before the end of the year. Doing so will allow ADF members and veterans to benefit from these generous arrangements from next year and will assist them and their families in working out what is going to happen with their housing arrangements in the next calendar year. I would expect these changes to boost homeownership amongst current and former defence personnel, which is a key plank of the Labor government's strategy going forward.

This has been designed with military families. We appreciate the consultation. They have been looking at better posting cycles, which is something this government has been looking at too, and at better transition services and housing solutions. They will support the government's initiative to attack veterans homelessness. One in 10 people last night who were homeless were a veteran sleeping rough. We can't honour them just on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day; we've got to honour them each and every day. Over the next five years $30 million in returns from our $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund will be allocated to build more housing and to fund specialist services for veterans who are experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness, as part of our broader investments in affordable and social housing.

This extra assistance for the defence and veteran community comes on top of the government's broader measures to address cost-of-living pressures, which have been making it very difficult for Australians, particularly those in the veteran community, to achieve their dream of homeownership. We are making housing more affordable and helping Australians buy homes through initiatives such as the Housing Australia Future Fund and a new National Housing Accord with all levels of government, investors and the construction industry to deliver 20,000 affordable homes.

These reforms to the DHOAS are just one part of our strong election and budget package of tangible support for veterans with a focus on cost-of-living, service delivery, jobs, housing and family support to improve the welfare of veterans and their families. These are not platitudes or token gestures, like dodgy discount schemes and lapel pins, so loved and promoted by the previous coalition government.

Through this bill the government is improving access to homeownership for defence personnel early in their careers and is allowing veterans to access assistance anytime after they have completed their service. This is practical financial, wellbeing help for veterans, their families and defence personnel in Ipswich, Townsville, Brisbane and throughout the country.

In conclusion, it was Labor that created the Defence Home Ownership Assistance Scheme. Now the Labor government and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are expanding it by allowing veterans to access the scheme at any time after they've left the ADF. Defence personnel and veterans shouldn't have to worry about where they're going to live after their service is completed. Their housing options should not be vexing them or stressing them in any way.

We are making it easier for current defence personnel to buy their own homes by allowing them access to this scheme after just two years. This won't just give new and future veterans and their families a more secure future; it will help the recruitment of defence personnel. This measure again demonstrates that this government is serious about providing practical support for our current and ex-serving personnel and their families to ensure a better future for the defence and veteran community.

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