Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I was elected in 2016, and in the last seven years I cannot recall a time when so many people in my community have contacted me to describe the hardship they're experiencing, and what started as a trickle has become a flood of stories. I heard a term recently, 'polycrisis'—multiple crises that culminate in leaving people in a state of despair.

The centre of this crisis is the cost of living. People are suffering enormous pressure with regard to energy costs, rent or mortgage stress, grocery bills, insurance costs, school fees, council rates, and the list goes on. This week I spoke to an elderly couple in my community. They're going to bed at six o'clock at night because they can't afford to put on the heaters, they're going to bed and putting on their electric blanket and they're trying not to get up until it's at least warm—because their electricity bill for a quarter is over $800. That is just not sustainable. Energy costs are, I think, the nub of this crisis—that, coupled with housing.

In my community, all of our shelter and emergency food organisations are really buckling under the pressure. Hungry No More, run out of the Mount Barker Uniting Church, six months ago were feeding around 50 people. Now they're feeding around 70. They have five people sleeping around the church grounds—some in tents, some in their cars and some on couches. The church would normally be able to find alternative accommodation for them, but there isn't any. This is a fault that lies with successive state and federal governments. We're talking about that constant salami-cutting of state government owned housing right across our nation and we're talking about the fact that we haven't had a housing policy. NRAS was aged out, and for a decade we haven't had anything that has increased the stock.

It's impossible to understand in our nation. We are an energy powerhouse, and yet the people in our communities are in this terrible situation. We should be the envy of the world, but instead I have, day in, day out, people writing to me and saying they have never contacted a member of parliament about these issues before. We must do better. We must treat this with the urgency that it deserves. We must all work together here, and state governments need to do their share as well. I can't think of another time like this. There is a hopelessness. We need to find the solutions and we all need to work together to do this. So I would urge the government: make this your No. 1 priority, because fielding those calls is just heartbreaking. We must do more, so let's all come together to make this happen.

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