Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like many communities in Australia, in Longman we are suffering a housing crisis. At a recent leaders forum hosted by the City of Moreton Bay council the following alarming stats were shared. There are approximately 1,424 people experiencing homelessness in Moreton Bay, and this is a 92 per cent increase in the last decade. Not all of these homeless people are what many people picture as stereotypical homeless people: unemployed, dishevelled individuals with substance abuse issues. Many are families and working people, in some cases with children, who cannot find any available housing. One of the issues we have around finding a housing solution in this country is that it requires all levels of government to play their individual parts. The federal government should provide the funding, the state and territory governments should build the housing and local governments should ensure developers are able to simply and affordably develop new housing estates in faster time frames. This means cutting red and green tape and government fees. My local council, the City of Moreton Bay council, to their credit announced earlier this year they have removed 100 per cent of fees in targeted areas for community housing providers and developers building community and affordable housing, and there's a 50 per cent remission of fees in other areas so that these savings can be passed on to reduce the cost of housing. I encourage other LGAs around Australia to follow suit.

I was fortunate in the last term of government to be on a committee that held an inquiry into Australia's housing shortage and availability. We took evidence from developments, real estate agents, homeless organisations, local councils and other stakeholders, and without exception the only solution they all came up with was that state and local governments must release land faster so that the economic principle of supply and demand can kick in. If there is more stock then prices will drop—it is that simple. Some will say the answer is simply more funding for social housing. I would contend it's not only how much funding but how the funding is spent. I went and had a look at how in my home state of Queensland the money on social and community housing had been spent over the six years from 2015 to 2020, which is the most up-to-date data I could find. In that time the federal government had provided to the Queensland state Labor government a total of $1.7 billion for housing. In that same time period the total social and community housing stock in Queensland went from 71,183 to 71,424 dwellings. That's an increase of just 241 or 49 new dwellings per year on average over six years. This means that each home cost on average $7,344,400—that's per home.

Mr Speaker, I'm in the wrong game! This is a perfect example of how managing money correctly gets outcomes, not just spending more money to get outcomes. In business, if you gave an organisation or individual $1.7 billion to provide housing that on average over that period should have cost no more than $400,000 per home and they charged you over $7 million per home, you would stop dealing with them, surely. Why don't federal governments of all political persuasions stop funding state governments that don't deliver and instead give the funding to not-for-profits and non-government organisations that I'm sure would deliver houses with a price tag of less than $7,344,400 per home.

One of the attributes of leadership is prioritising tasks and issues you are dealing with. Many people in the Longman electorate are asking why at was time of economic hardship this Labor government and this Prime Minister are prioritising spending $360 million on a divisive referendum on a voice to parliament when at $400,000 per home that would provide 900 homes to help address a housing crisis that affects all Australians not just three per cent of Australians. I reckon they're asking a fair question. We also need to always be developing policies that will get people off the rental roundabout and into their own home. I'm a great believer in allowing people to use their super to get into the housing market and own their home faster. At the last election, the coalition proposed being able to use a part of your super as a deposit to get into the market for your first home. I'd like to go one step further and propose that if people transfer their money into a self-managed super fund, they could choose to offset that against their mortgage, saving tens of thousands of dollars in interest and owning their own home earlier. After all, it's their money, why shouldn't they decide how it is spent if they want to? Something must be done. I have never seen the homeless situation this bad in my entire life.