Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this really desperate issue for people in my community. I'm seriously concerned. Just last week, I met with charities and people in the community housing industry, and also local real estate agents, and they only confirmed my worries. One real estate agent told me that investors are pulling out of the housing market, leading to a reduction of rental stock, with a flow-on effect of raising rental prices. But this is only part of the problem. We're seeing things like the middle class homeless, the poor struggling to survive and food banks working on overdrive. The agency's rental stock has gone down 25 per cent. Rentals are tenanted within one week, and there are hundreds queuing to view each property as soon as it's listed. Tenants are becoming increasingly desperate. How on earth are we going to house 1.5 million extra people in this country?

We know where they're going to go. Sixty per cent of new migrants come to greater Western Sydney. Our roads are clogged. Congestion is huge. How are these people going to get to work and home again? Our hospitals are clogged. We don't have enough GPs. Where are they going to live? These are the big, very real, very serious questions.

Labor is bringing 1.5 million in their big ambition to create a big Australia in just five years, and 60 per cent will probably come to Western Sydney and other places like Western Sydney right across the country. That's close to double the number of enrolled voters in my Lindsay electorate arriving every single year, and it's 321,000 more people than forecast in the October budget. Under Labor, 5,750 people will arrive every week. We know, according to Western Sydney University, as I said, that 60 per cent that come to Australia settle in greater Western Sydney where we don't have the infrastructure, we don't have the public hospital systems in place and we certainly do not have the housing.

As a member of parliament, it is my job to represent the views and interests of my constituents in Lindsay. Our community deserves to be considered and consulted. We have not been consulted about big Australia. I often speak about my priorities for the areas of Western Sydney that I represent in this House and our fight for infrastructure, which is at threat of being dumped by this Labor government. The AMP chief economist, Dr Shane Oliver, has noted that the resurgence in underlying demand on the back of very high immigration and that 400,000 arrivals this year equates to demand for an extra 200,000 dwellings. I go back to my local real estate agent, somebody who is on the ground in Western Sydney, who is seeing the impact of a lack of rental stock. He is seeing in his work that people who have two incomes are now lining up at foodbanks to put food on the table for their families, and they are at risk of losing their homes.

In addition to that, there are the Australians from my electorate who have been stuck in traffic or crammed onto trains and buses this morning. There are 300,000 people who commute out of Western Sydney every day for a good job. Can you imagine when 60 per cent of new migrants come into Western Sydney—that 1.5 million people that Labor have committed to in their 'big Australia' ambitions. Labor's budget cuts to infrastructure and failure to address congestion, the housing and rental crisis and the liveability of our towns and suburbs in the not too distant future will play out in communities like mine. It's not fair and it's not right, but I will be continuing to fight and continuing to make a noise for people in Western Sydney.

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