Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I represent an electorate which is generally perceived as well-off. It's an electorate with a mean income of $106,000 a year, an electorate in which unemployment is only 2.2 per cent. Even in Kooyong, though, Australians are doing it hard. If we don't change things, the current generation of young adults will be the first Australian generation to be less wealthy than that which came before it. This is because of the damage done to our economy and our infrastructure by recent governments more so than the damage done to our economy by the recent pandemic, although that epidemic has left us with educational and social challenges, the full burden of which is likely not yet manifest.

We in this place are handing the next generation indexed and increasing HECS debts. We're handing the next generation a narrowing tax base with increasing dependency on personal income tax in which those left in the workplace will have to pay more in tax to support an ageing population. We're handing the next generation the economic burden of climate change, the cost of which was estimated in last week's Intergenerational report to be $423 billion. Finally, we are handing the next generation a housing crisis which has developed because we in this country have seen housing as a means of wealth generation rather than as a basic human right.

These issues matter to the 20- and 30-year-olds of Kooyong just as much as they do to those in the other 150 electorates of Australia. We owe the next generation more. I want to read to the House an email that I received recently from a constituent. I find this letter confronting because it speaks to the difficult and inconvenient truths about the failure of our government to protect the best interests of our citizens and to ensure the better future of our children. I want to place it on the record so that my constituent's concerns and experiences can be heard in this place. I wish to show him the respect that he deserves. I have permission from my constituent to read this letter but I've not included some personal sentences. I will otherwise read the entirety of the letter:

My name is Carey Ciuro.

I am writing to you today as a renter in your electorate and in response to today's national cabinet.

Firstly, I am 38. I have been a renter for my entire adult life. Recently I undertook the path towards home ownership, after five years of hard work to save a deposit, develop my career and increase my employability through a Masters. I attended an auction for a small unit in Kew, where multiple first home buyers, including myself, hoped to buy a property with an estimate of $540,000-$580,000 for under the $600,000 to lock in the First Home Owners Grant. Needless to say, the property sold to an investor for $610,000, blowing away every other bidder.

I am not upset by this. It is actually expected. I expect this to happen many times over the course of my journey. I am likely to continue renting for some time to come.

My rental is modest and comparatively affordable. It is close to my work, with a car park and renovated kitchen. It has however, four broken windows which don't close and water damage that is likely to have caused mold. Redemption works to have this addressed have been fruitless, with the OC promising that the windows are being replaced all together, and therefore the landlord has asked me to wait. Powerless as I am to challenge any of this for fear of a rent increase to compensate, I have endured the top temperatures of 14 degrees in my apartment this winter, as my last bill to run the heater cost me $300. A cost I can hardly afford.

For what it's worth the WHO recommends that a safe habitable temperature is 18 degrees for houses in winter …

I am also not upset by this. This, in the scale of rentals I have lived in the past, is like a palace. I am utterly blessed and privileged to be living alone, something afforded to me by a stable upbringing and secure job. Other renters are not so lucky.

The percentage of renters in Australia is growing rapidly, compounded by an almost impossible to penetrate housing market. For a growing number of renters home ownership is a farce. A fairy tale of a bygone era. The best most of them can hope for is somewhere habitable, safe and stable to live. Even that is slowly whittled away by the gears of Government inaction. Homes built at volume today are an utter joke, almost always built with a defect or non-compliant minimum building standard. The avenues for recourse and remediation are futile, constricted as they are due to the sheer volume of failures in the industry. When you do find something you're happy to commit to you are taken on a circus ride of impossibly confusing laws and regulations. I paid $150 for a conveyancer for the aforementioned flat just to read the contract with me. Money down the drain. I was quoted $750 for a builder surveyor to inspect the property to ensure my half a million dollar purchase was not going to collapse, something you cannot do for every property less you want to go broke. I get more protection buying a used car than buying a house. Reporting the agent for undercutting is a laughable, well known waste of time.

It is with all this in mind I want to remind you of the reality of today's National Cabinet announcement. 200,000 extra homes than originally promised, as a stretch goal. Building to start by 2024, over five years. I'll be 44 by the time the houses are done, but never mind me, as I said I'm lucky. Families are living in cars. Now. There was no real change to rental rights either, just a promised national standard for already enacted state legislation, all of which I believe have only exacerbated the problems of renting.

The Government's work on this is a mockery. Its transparent gas lighting of criticism, pigheaded as it is, has left me with a rage not felt since I last saw Scott Morrison.

I know this is a long, rambling messaging, but I want to express to you the rage that is growing within the 31% of renters in Australia. This group is not declining. It is growing. If trends continue renters will be a larger percentage of tenure than mortgage holders in less than a decade. Labor seems to be wanting to entrench this growing class of Australians as normalised, powerless and indebted. To me, this woeful, pathetic charade is Un-Australian. They are ensuring the coming Australians are the worst off.

I know you are just one representative. The system is a faceless, formidable tyrant that may never change, but I hope my message resonates and empowers you to speak for those that aren't or can't.

Deputy Speaker, I hope you agree that this was an incredibly powerful and difficult email to receive. The crisis in housing availability and affordability in this country is disproportionately affecting our young adolescents and adults. There are many things that this government, our state governments and our local governments could do to address this crisis. I voted for this government's Housing Futures Fund, but it's too small, it is too little and the homes will come too slowly. We need this government to intervene as a matter of urgency. We need this government to build more social and affordable housing in places where people want to live and work. We need this government to make the most of the housing stock that we already have. We need the government to do this as a matter of urgency.