Ash Ambihaipahar (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I might just change the tone that's going on in this chamber, because there are some people that are really impacted by this issue. Housing is the biggest issue that I learned of through my time at St Vincent de Paul. I just want to reflect on some of the remarks from the member for Hume today. He talked a lot of smack about other people in this chamber and outside the chamber. But he didn't talk about young people. He didn't talk about the future of Australia. He didn't even provide an alternative to the Australian people, other than taking this down.

What we also need to highlight is that we have to be honest about the housing system. It's broken; we know that. Since 1999, house prices have risen by more than 400 per cent. Wages have not kept up. In 1999, I was 12 years old. I am now 39. That means the rise in house prices has happened entirely across my young adult and full adult life. So it took a long time for me, as a 39-year-old, and my husband to, between us, to save to buy our first home. I feel very grateful that we were able to buy in the St George area, in my electorate, and be close to family and friends and the places where we work. But since being elected to this place, we've also been able to purchase a small apartment in Canberra so we can juggle the lifestyle between being here and being back in the electorate.

I've also had the opportunity to be a scientist and a lawyer. Some people have been making comments today about whether people are small-business owners. I myself was not a small-business owner, but I know there are a lot of people on this side of the chamber who have been. But I have the privilege of being a member of parliament. The roles that I've been in at those different points of my life have given me access to secure work and decent pay. That was not only because of working hard—the people I grew up with also worked hard. The reality is that we live in one of the luckiest countries in the world. We have so much opportunity.

My experience is that I was in the right industries at the right time with the right opportunities. Growing up, I had friends who also worked very hard. They worked hard at school. They completed their training. They built their careers. They're raising their beautiful kids. They're caring for their parents. They've done all the right things, and still they're struggling to buy a home. We talk a lot about houses and investment, but it's a home. I cannot look my friends and other people in my community in the eye and tell them that the current system is fair. And I can't defend a system that tells people my age to suck it up and keep supporting rules that favour investments over homes, because that's what we've heard today from the member for Hume and the member for Lindsay.

I had the privilege of helping people in the member for Lindsay's electorate when I worked at St Vincent de Paul. It's not all roses in the member for Lindsay's electorate. There are people really struggling. One in three people that came to the St Vincent de Paul Society were first timers. They had two secure jobs in the household, two incomes coming in, but struggled to pay the rent. That is a reality for many people, even the people in the member for Lindsay's seat.

If it hadn't been hard for people my age, I cannot begin to imagine how hard it is for Australians 10 years younger than me, who are approaching 30, about to take the next step in life, who want to settle down, have their first kid, maybe have another kid, build stability and stay near to people they love. But then, they look at their bank accounts and they think, 'Where on earth is that money supposed to come from?'

Last week, I had the opportunity to go to a youth radio station in Kogarah and meet some of the volunteers there. One young woman said to me—she's about 17 years old—'Ash, I've accepted the fact that I will never own my home.' This is the reality for young people. They have resigned themselves to the fact that they will never own a home. We can't write them off; we can't keep talking about avocado and toast. Those days have to end. The reality is that she is 17. These are young people. This is not the Australia we should accept, and this is not the future we should ask our young people to settle for.

I'm not giving up on the Australian dream—the dream that you can own your home, that you can live near your family and people you like, that you can build a stable, secure life through hard work. This government is not giving up on that dream either. That is why we have introduced this budget, and the Australian dream should not be something a 17-year-old already has to give up on.

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