Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to give voice to the millions of Australians confronting and often struggling through the current housing crisis and also to call on the government to establish a royal commission to scrutinise the matter and recommend a blueprint to address it. There really is a crisis right now. It is undeniable.

For a start, there is a chronic shortage of emergency accommodation—obviously for women and their children fleeing domestic violence but more broadly for men, women and children right across the country who are in need of emergency accommodation for countless reasons. Likewise, there's a chronic shortage of public housing. By some estimates, the country is short some 640,000 public dwellings. I give credit to the government as it has pledged to create 30,000 additional homes over five years, but I think it's self-evident that that will do little to avert the crisis. In fact, it will be lucky to keep up with the annual growth in the shortfall of public houses around Australia.

Of course renting is now out of reach for many people. Those managing to hold a rental do so at the expense of other life necessities. It's interesting to note that rents are increasing seven times faster than wage growth on average around Australia. Purchasing a home is hardly a better an option. By some calculations, house prices in Australia are still some 15 per cent higher than pre-COVID when an average is taken across the combined capital cities.

No wonder there are so many people homeless around Australia. In fact, in fiscal year 2021-22 something like 100,000 Australians sought specialist homeless support, which was up some nine per cent on the previous year. It makes you wonder just how many people are homeless right now. There are somewhere north of 100,000 people homeless in one of the richest and most fortunate countries in the world. Importantly, about a quarter of those homeless people are aged between 12 and 24. Again this is in one of the richest and most fortunate countries in the world.

Of course, Tasmania is not immune. In some cases it's worse off than the mainland states. When it comes to crisis accommodation, I take the example of the Hobart Women's Shelter, who last financial year took 1,182 calls for help, but turned away 943 of them. So, in a rough order of magnitude, Hobart Women's Shelter was able to provide accommodation for only about one-fifth of the women, often with children, who were crying out for urgent help.

When it comes to public housing, in Tasmania currently about 4½ thousand people are on the public housing waiting list. This is in a state with a population of only about half a million. On average it's taking almost 80 weeks to house a priority applicant—not all applicants or any applicant. It's almost 78 weeks to house a priority applicant.

When it comes to rental affordability things are no better. In fact, as per the rental affordability index, Greater Hobart continues to be the country's least affordable metropolitan area, with the median rent having increased by 60 per cent since 2016. According to Shelter Tas's CEO Pattie Chugg, rents in Hobart are now 11 per cent higher than the median rent in Melbourne. This is a remarkable piece of information: rents in Hobart are 11 per cent higher than the median rent in Melbourne.

Then there's the homelessness situation in Tasmania, and it is certainly no better than the figures I've quoted for elsewhere around Australia. In fact, Tasmania's homelessness rate is increasing faster than anywhere else in the nation. On census night in 2021, 2,350 people in Tasmania said they were experiencing homelessness compared with 1,622 on census night five years earlier. So, in five years, that's an extra 728 Tasmanians becoming homeless in a state of only half a million people. Perhaps the next statistic is the most chilling of the lot. On census night in 2021, there were 569 children under the age of 18 who were homeless, including 325 children under the age of 12. This is a humanitarian tragedy as much as it is a housing crisis, but there's no shortage of solutions.

There is no shortage of solutions whatsoever. It's just a case of having some ambition and being prepared to take some risks—be bold, spend some political capital and make sometimes controversial decisions. That's what's needed. For example, why doesn't the government increase Commonwealth rent assistance by 50 per cent? It could do it in the budget coming up in a couple of months time. What about investing in more crisis accommodation, investing in more public and social housing and more supported accommodation for people with specific needs, extending the National Rental Affordability Scheme instead of letting it slowly wind up over the next handful of years, reining in short-stay accommodation and returning it to its original model of making spare rooms available?

I remind the House that it's called Airbnb because the origin was an air bed and breakfast—an air bed on a bit of spare floor in the lounge room or the spare room or the granny flat. That's what it was all about. But now we see in Tasmania hundreds of long-term rentals being converted, basically, to holiday accommodations. The losers are the long-term residents of the city. There I go: rein in negative gearing and get rid of the capital gains tax concession on investment properties. That's what all the experts are suggesting we do: just get rid of the capital gains tax concession and rein in negative gearing. Sure, people have made investment decisions in good faith over the years, and it would be good it we were to, perhaps, grandfather current arrangements or cap future arrangements.

There are ways through this which are politically achievable, if the government is prepared to go there and to educate the community and explain the need, explain the unfairness and still protect people who have made historic investment decisions. A vacant property tax is something that state governments could also consider. I know in Tasmania there are thousands of empty homes. This is crazy when we've got a homelessness crisis. Around Australia there must be tens of thousands of empty homes—as many as 100,000, at a guess. Perhaps we could impose a tax disincentive on the owners to make sure they put someone in those homes and accommodation.

That brings me back to the start of this short speech. I want to give voice to the people who are suffering through this. Many of them don't have a voice. They just quietly go about their business and do the best they can: mum and the kids in a car, in a car park late at night, trying their best to stay warm and stay out of the rain, and the thousands of people couch surfing or living in a garden shed or garage of a friend's place. They don't have a voice. I'm giving them a voice. I feel I speak for a lot of my colleagues in this House when I do this.

I make the point again: this is something that warrants a royal commission. I'm the first to say to people, 'We've got to stop calling for a royal commission at the drop of a hat.' As soon as there's a problem, someone says 'Let's have a royal commission.' Obviously royal commissions should be reserved for the most pressing matters and the most important matters, like Aboriginal deaths in custody, banking and financial services, veterans suicide, aged care and institutional child sexual abuse. I would add homelessness to that, because homelessness in this country has now reached an absolute crisis point. Maybe a royal commission would provide a non-political way to explore it. Maybe a royal commission could come up with recommendations that would unlock this and give the government a licence to go places where it is currently too timid to go, like getting rid of the concession on the capital gains tax, like reigning in, in some way, or even doing away with negative gearing. Maybe it would give the government the out to say: 'Okay, this isn't our political decision. This isn't something we've dreaded since 2019. This is something an independent inquisitor has looked at and found to have merit.' That's what we need.