Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, if I'm mistaken I'll take that on board, but that's what I heard.

I don't pretend to know what goes on in the electorate offices of the opposition or the Greens, but I suspect that it's similar to what goes on in my office, where every single day my staff and I are talking to constituents who are desperate for safe and secure housing. This has traditionally been an issue for state governments. It is increasingly coming to our orbit, and we are determined to tackle it head-on.

In the past few months I've spoken to working families, older women, single parents, grandparents caring for grandchildren, students, and women and children escaping domestic violence. All have stories of spending years on public housing waiting lists—some on emergency housing waiting lists—and making do in the meantime by sleeping rough or relying on friends or family for a roof over their heads. The answer is to increase supply, to build more houses.

My office staff and I do all that we can to assist each and every one of the people who come to ask for help, but the stark reality is that there are just not enough houses to house people. We've got 4½ thousand people on the housing waiting list in Tasmania alone. The member for North Sydney says there are 51,000 people in New South Wales. We can argue till we're blue in the face about the reasons we got here. I can tell you it's about decades of underinvestment by successive state governments across the nation. But the federal government are not willing to sit idly by. We have a plan of action backed by a $10 billion fund. It's a plan of action we took to the election.

I simply cannot fathom how members opposite, particularly the Greens members on the crossbench and the Greens members of the Senate, are blocking the bill. They blocked the last bill. We've reintroduced it. We want it to go through. Tasmanian Greens senators Nick McKim and Peter Whish-Wilson need to look homeless Tasmanians in the eye in Homelessness Week and explain why they have been blocking the building of 30,000 homes over the next five years, 6,000 of them to be built in Tasmania, that will put roofs over heads. They say they want cheaper rents. You get cheaper rates by increasing supply. Tasmanian Liberal senators Jonathon Duniam, Wendy Askew, Claire Chandler and Richard Colbeck need to explain why they were happy for billions of dollars to be rorted under their government but they aren't prepared to support billions being invested for vulnerable Australians.

There is a very real human cost to the political parlour games being played by the Greens and the Liberals. It's a cost borne by people who have no roof over their head or who are stuck in a violent home because there is nowhere else to go. This week politicians of all stripes will be going out for Homelessness Week and sleeping rough. That doesn't build houses. It's a nice symbolic gesture. We don't need symbolic gestures. We need the Housing Australia Future Fund passed by the Senate.

Debate interrupted.

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