Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the Government's announcement of a new $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator to deliver thousands of new social rental homes across Australia;

(2) acknowledges the Government's commitment to an ambitious housing agenda which will boost the supply of all housing, with more social housing, more affordable housing, more homes to rent and more homes to buy, and includes:

(a) establishing the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee three months early, helping regional Australians purchase a home with as little as a five per cent deposit and avoiding paying Lenders Mortgage Insurance;

(b) widening the remit of the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, making up to $575 million available to invest immediately in social and affordable rental homes, with projects already under construction as a result of this funding;

(c) working with the states and territories through the National Housing Accord and National Cabinet to support planning and zoning reforms to contribute to the aspiration of building one million new homes over five years from 2024, as well as investing $350 million in additional federal funding to deliver 10,000 affordable rental homes over five years from 2024 as part of the accord—matched by the states and territories;

(d) further establishing the interim National Housing Supply and Affordability Council to provide expert advice to Government on housing supply and affordability;

(e) delivering the largest increase to Commonwealth Rent Assistance in more than 30 years, with a 15 per cent increase in the maximum rates;

(f) increasing the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation's liability cap by $2 billion to provide lower cost and longer-term finance to community housing providers through the Affordable Housing Bond Aggregator;

(g) providing tax incentives to encourage more build-to-rent developments to boost new supply in the private rental market;

(h) further providing an additional $67.5 million of funding to the states and territories to help tackle homelessness challenges as part of a one-year extension to the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement which provides $1.7 billion a year to the states and territories for housing and homelessness services; and

(i) expanding eligibility for the Home Guarantee Scheme, which helps people purchase a home sooner by reducing the deposit they need to save; and

(3) condemns the Opposition and the Australian Greens for blocking the Housing Australia Future Fund, and notes that every day of delay is $1.3 million not being spent on social and affordable housing for Australians who need it today.

Renters are doing it tough. Unit rents in Victoria alone have gone up 22 per cent in the last year. The median rent now in Victoria is sitting at $500 a week. Tough decisions are being made by renters and other people around the country, around the essentials of life—decisions around food, around fuel, around clothing and around skills acquisition.

But there is a group that is actually doing it tougher than renters, and that is homeless Australians—the invisible homeless Australians. I was a frontline doctor for 26 years, and every single day my ward rounds would start in the emergency department. Why? Because I would be seeing homeless Australians every single day. They came from all walks of life. Initially, they were older men; then I started seeing older women; then it became young men and, finally, young women. I recall vividly a young woman in her 20s who had addiction problems and was also a sex worker, who was homeless and came into hospital with an infection in her foot. She left after 24 hours, for lots of reasons. These people without a roof over their head lead chaotic lives. I always kept a box of antibiotics by the bedside in anticipation that these patients would leave hospital, because I knew they would likely abscond. She left and went out into the unknown. I couldn't fix this problem as a doctor, but I'm now a parliamentarian and I certainly am committed to doing something about it.

We have, in Australia, an acute imbalance between supply and demand, and there is one cure that will fix both the rental crisis and the homelessness crisis, and that is: increasing supply. This is basically economics 101. We know that new dwellings in Australia peaked in 2016-17 but have been falling ever since.

We also know that this housing crisis did not happen overnight. It has been years in the making under successive Liberal governments, with whom we had a decade and who basically kicked the can down the road. They sounded good, but they didn't actually do any good when they were in office. So we now have a problem which is of a magnitude that requires multifaceted solutions that involve all three tiers of government, because, as we speak, there are at least 230,000 households who are on social and affordable housing waiting lists.

The problems with respect to social housing were brought home in a recent roundtable I hosted in my electorate with the Minister for Housing, Julie Collins, and stakeholders. These are some of the things they said: 'We need to be working in partnership with others. This is not about blaming people; this is about working together. You cannot address poverty without addressing the lack of affordable housing.'

We agree, and this is why we have an absolutely massive housing agenda. We have already committed $9.5 billion in the last financial year to social and affordable housing—the highest in Commonwealth history. That includes $2 billion, passed just a few weeks ago, to the states, in our Social Housing Accelerator. Victoria alone got $496.5 million and the minister is waiting now on site so that she can sign off on this and we can start to build those homes. We boosted the build-to-rent sector, which the Property Council estimates will contribute another 150,000 to 250,000 homes over the next decade. The Treasurer is leading the National Housing Accord, which aims to build a billion—I mean a million—homes from 2024. I wish it was a billion! We've expanded the Home Guarantee Scheme with another 50,000 extra spots. We've provided a $1.7 billion extension to the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement with the states.

In the last budget, as you know, we increased Commonwealth rent assistance by 15 per cent. This is designed to aid those patients that I looked after every single day. But we also have a piece of legislation, the Housing Australia Future Fund, which should not be contentious by any stretch but has become a fault line in this parliament. I have no idea why, but I suspect it has something to do with the piety of the Greens and the inaction of the Liberal Party, who had a decade in government and now have the temerity to write to our housing minister demanding that she does something about social housing while basically blocking this bill in the upper house. It makes no sense to me. We know that in Tasmania they are experiencing the highest acuity problems with respect to social housing, which is why we have negotiated in good faith with the crossbench and won the support of David Pocock, Tammy Tyrrell and Jacqui Lambie for this bill. It should be passed. It is unconscionable not to do so. (Time expired)

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