Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bennelong, and I agree with him: we shouldn't be whingeing; we should be working. But not whingeing does not mean not having a decent critique, either. In my electorate of Indi, housing pressures continue to be one of the most pressing and commonly brought issues that come to my office. Homeowners continue to feel the pressure of interest rates and the high cost of living. Renters struggle to imagine homeownership at all, with vacancy rates critically low and rents continuing to rise. When it comes to social housing, thousands of people remain on wait lists in towns like Wodonga, Wangaratta and Benalla. Homelessness is at rates we have never seen before in rural and regional Australia.

There is no doubt that there is so much more to be done to make housing affordable and accessible in Australia. However, while the motion before the House points to failure, I'm determined to, as I said, focus on solutions—and solutions that work for the people I represent in rural and regional Australia. I'm not here just to describe a problem. That is why, since 2022, I've called for a $2 billion regional housing infrastructure fund to help local councils build the pipes, the pavements and the poles that unlock new housing. It's not glamorous, but it works. When you fund sewerage, water and roads, you turn zoned but vacant land into build-ready land. That's how you add supply in regional Australia, because regional Australia needs solutions that focus on specific regional needs.

You don't have to look far in my electorate of Indi to see the reality of infrastructure constraints. In Tawonga, new developments are paused because there simply isn't enough water capacity in town. In Benalla, millions of dollars worth of drainage works are required before further homes can be built. Of course, we need to be mindful of how we build and where we build, but without greater investment in critical infrastructure there will be little new housing. We have to have critical investment in infrastructure.

Regional councils can't afford this infrastructure alone. This is where the Commonwealth needs to step in more if we're to make real progress on the housing crisis in regional communities. So I welcomed the government's announcement of the $500 million Housing Support Program in August 2023. It's exactly what I was calling for. It was a good start, but it didn't land where it needed to, in specifically targeting regional Australia. The coalition committed $5 billion to enabling infrastructure during the recent election, and I hope that as the member for Fadden and his colleagues continue to work through their policy review they hang on to this one.

We're also now a couple of years past the creation of the government's flagship housing policy, the Housing Australia Future Fund . I worked constructively on that legislation and secured amendments to put regional voices on the record. I also sought to guarantee a fair share of funding for regional Australia. While the government would not back those improvements, I'm going to keep pushing them for stronger, targeted regional funding. Unfortunately, the jury is still out on the HAFF. For most Australians, it is unclear how this $10 billion policy has delivered and what it will deliver. It's not clear how communities in my electorate have benefitted or will benefit. If the government wants ongoing support for its HAFF, it's going to need to do a whole lot more to communicate how and where it's making a difference. If the HAFF doesn't start making serious progress, we have little chance of meeting the government's target of 1.2 million homes by 2030. Ambition is well and good, but it's getting investment into the regions, where funding is desperately needed, that will make a difference. The path is not to abandon or undermine the target, as the opposition seeks to do, but to do everything we can to meet it.

So what needs to change for regional Australia? First, establish a regional housing infrastructure fund. Open it to local governments to co-fund the infrastructure that makes developments viable at scale. Second, ensure that 30 per cent of housing funding flows to the regions, because that's where 30 per cent of the people live. Third, we should require Housing Australia and its investment mandate to explicitly recognise enabling infrastructure as an eligible activity. The housing crisis does not stop at the limits of Sydney or Melbourne. In Indi, the housing crisis makes it harder for health services to recruit, for farmers to find workers and for families to find somewhere to call home. We can change that if we stop treating the regions as an afterthought. We need to centre regional housing and investment in the critical infrastructure that's holding back new homes right now across rural and regional Australia.

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