Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to refer to the Western Australian public housing crisis. It is no secret that Western Australia has a booming economy, chiefly led by the growth in the mining and resources sectors. But this boom is not the only reason for the state’s deepening housing affordability crisis. Families, literally living on the streets, are on waiting lists of up to a year for any relief through public housing as a result of the state Labor government’s inability to make adequate land releases and maintain public housing stocks.

Constituents are calling or coming to my office almost daily in despair because they are not able to secure government housing. For example, in one case a young man, Mr Aaron Jolley, and his two-year-old daughter are living out of a car. Often this father is able to park the car in a friend’s driveway; however, he and his toddler daughter are forced to sleep in the car simply because there is no other option. Following an appeal to the Department of Housing and Works, the father has been placed on the priority housing list; however, realistically it may be some months, possibly a year, before this man can secure suitable accommodation. In the interim, Crisis Care and the Department of Community Development have been unable to assist in providing any type of accommodation, despite the need for his young daughter to be in a safe and stable environment.

In another case, a young mother, her partner and three young children are living in a leaking caravan in a friend’s driveway during the cold winter months. The West Australian reported this week that Anglicare crisis accommodation requests ‘had jumped from five a week five years ago to five a day in the past six months’ and the Access Housing Association claims that calls received from desperate homeless people looking for accommodation has tripled in the last six months.

It is a vicious circle. Limited land releases have pushed prices up, limiting the ability of people to purchase their own home and therefore tightening up the rental market. Demand and the excessive land tax charged by the Western Australian government have seen increases passed on to tenants and rents soar. The median rental price in Perth for a three-bedroom home is $270 per week, a massive 17.4 per cent rise from the preceding 12 months, which is more than double the increase of any other capital city throughout the country. The tight and expensive rental market has seen demand for public housing escalate almost to a point of no return. The Homeswest waiting list increased by 1,200 applicants in the last six months of 2006; in December last year there were almost 15,000 people on the waiting list and this would have increased no doubt in the first few months of 2007. In the south-east metropolitan region there are 825 people waiting for public housing in an area that covers Armadale, Brookdale, Serpentine, Seville Grove and Southern River.

Despite the clear increase in demand over the last two years, there has been, unbelievably, a decline in public housing stocks. The Carpenter government has simply turned a blind eye. The state opposition has been loud in its claims that the problem has been ignored and has criticised the Minister for Housing and Works, Michelle Roberts, for glossing over the issue by making small announcements of a few additional units here and there which make no dent in the problem.

Families in this dire situation see little hope. Emergency shelters are full and the waiting lists for public housing are so long that people are forced to live with relatives, if they are lucky; in other cases parks are the only option. Whilst the state government has announced plans to increase public housing stocks by 1,000 over the next four years, it is too little too late. The writing was on the wall a long time ago and both the Gallop and the Carpenter governments have failed to address the problem. The WA Council of Social Service Executive Director, Lisa Baker, told the West Australian this week that housing stock needed to be increased by 3,300 each year to meet demand.

The preliminary report handed down in January this year by Western Australia’s Housing Affordability Taskforce entitled Western Australia’s Housing Affordability Crisis concluded that land supply constraints rather than excessive demand have been the root cause of the rapid decline in housing affordability. As the task force surmised, the state Labor government needs to be held to account for its failure to allow adequate supply of land, its failure to heed warnings about inadequate land supply and the extensive delays in the planning system for approvals and be accountable for the subsequent land supply problems. It said:

Any Government would have struggled to get an adequate supply of land on to the market in recent times in Perth and in Western Australia in general. However, it could have been done and it has been done by other governments when confronting similar problems.

In order to address the crisis, the Labor Government would have to have given top priority to sustaining housing affordability, recognised the fact that it faced a land supply problem, acknowledged this was caused by faults in the planning and approval process and been willing to do what it takes to get land on to the market.

In 2005-06 the state government collected just over $1.8 billion in taxes from stamp duty. This was the biggest source of taxation revenue collected. Even without adding in the revenue collected from land tax, a small portion of this invested back into public housing would have gone a long way towards getting families into safe and stable homes. Despite house prices in Perth more than doubling in the last five years it was not until two weeks ago that the state government made any changes to stamp duty thresholds. Housing affordability has become such an issue that only 970 first home buyers entered the market in February 2007. (Time expired)