Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing and Minister for the Status of Women. What will be the impact of the recent Council of Australian Governments meeting in the areas of housing and homelessness?

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start by thanking the member for Corangamite for the question. He is a member who is very concerned and very interested in housing affordability in his electorate. Probably not a week goes by without him contacting me personally or my staff to ask about the National Rental Affordability Scheme or the Housing Affordability Fund and how he can encourage applications for these new programs from people or organisations in his electorate.

The Council of Australian Governments meeting last weekend was one of the most important meetings in the history of the Commonwealth and Commonwealth-state relations, particularly as it relates to housing. Overall the COAG agreement provided $15.1 billion of additional funding. That is expected to lead to an extra 133,000 jobs.

When it comes to housing and homelessness, COAG was important because it signed off on a National Affordable Housing Agreement, for the first time bringing together funding from all the areas of involvement of the Commonwealth government in housing into one program that will help deliver a single strategy to deliver more affordable homes for more Australians. The National Affordable Housing Agreement will see the Commonwealth and the states and territories work together on issues of housing and homelessness. It will end the blame game between the Commonwealth and the states. For the first time the governments have agreed to act on and publicly report on a number of very important indicators: the rate of homelessness, for example; the level of rental stress; the number of affordable homes that are available for purchase; the efficiency of the housing market itself, including the supply of residential lots—making sure that there is enough land out there to build on; and housing outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

COAG signed off on a $10 billion deal on housing and homelessness over the weekend, including $6 billion from the Commonwealth into the National Affordable Housing Agreement to fund public and community housing and core homelessness services. Importantly, there is an extra $800 million in there of new money for homelessness services—$400 million from the Commonwealth and $400 million from the states.

There is $1.94 billion over 10 years for Indigenous housing, building 4,200 new homes and providing major upgrades for 4,800 homes. There is an additional $400 million in capital funding for new public and community housing, including specialist models for people who have been homeless. That money is to be spent over the coming two years—2008-09 and 2009-10. So it is great not just to have those new homes on the ground urgently for the people who need them but for it to play an important role as part of the economic stimulus aims of the government.

This builds on the $2.2 billion housing package in the May budget that has already seen new affordable rental properties. It has already seen new homes that homeless Australians have moved into, and new projects, like common ground facilities and facilities for young homeless people, underway, and it has seen thousands of young Australians taking out first home saver accounts. Those measures, of course, are complemented by the $1½ billion first home owner grant boost.

The decisions made at the COAG meeting on the weekend were welcomed by the housing and homelessness sector. Tony Nicholson said, of our homelessness response:

It should be something that all Australians can have a sense of pride about, that we are leading the way.

When it comes to rental accommodation, Noel Dyett of the Real Estate Institute of Australia said:

This funding is important; our research shows that there is a great deal of financial stress for those in rental accommodation … We need to look at solutions that will reduce the gap between supply and demand for rental accommodation in a tight market.

The COAG agreement on housing does that. It does a number of other things. I am very proud of it. This House should be proud of it too.