Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

During the election I said that housing is my No. 1 priority. That's for two reasons. First, housing is one of those basic human needs. Once you have met it, it gives you the literal space to become the person that you were meant to be and to do the things for your community that only you can do. Without a roof over your head, nothing else is possible. The second reason is that there is no greater impact a government can have on the economy than providing affordable housing. It really twigged for me in a casual conversation that I had about 20 years ago, when somebody told me that public housing was to be built around a meatworks in Brisbane to provide affordable housing to workers. That one conversation sparked an interest, and I went on to learn that the postwar economic miracle of Australia was achieved through two things: cheap housing and cheap energy. It was state and federal Labor and Liberal governments working together to build Australia.

It's largely forgotten now. But, before World War II, in the heart of Australian cities, there were great slums. Look at those genteel inner-city terrace homes today and just remember that, before the war, three or four families would be jammed into each of them—and those families were the lucky ones. Governments knew that it just wasn't good enough for our veterans to come back from World War II and live in slums, and so that was one impetus to build affordable housing. The other impetus was the economy. It was to provide cheap rent not just for vulnerable people but for workers. It's easy to think that cheap rent means more money in people's pockets to spend in local businesses, and, sure, that's important. But the economic benefit is much more profound than that. The real economic benefit is that cheap rent means wages don't need to be so high. That helps attract business. In fact, it's how the car industry, for example, became an industry. Public housing came to Australia. Public housing was built around car plants.

One of the greatest proponents of public housing was the South Australian Liberal premier Thomas Playford during World War II and for 20 years after it. He put into the charter of the South Australia Housing Trust that it would aid in the economic development of the state. By the 1990s, over 40 per cent of every rental in South Australia was public housing. Now that number is half. Nationally, public housing was about 20 per cent of every rental at the start of the nineties. Now it's about 10 per cent. On the Gold Coast, public housing accounts for about five per cent of every rental. You wonder why we have a housing crisis! I don't want to play the blame game, because, like the Minister for Housing said, this problem has been over 40 years in the making—so it's both sides of politics. But it became the most extreme in the nine years of the former government, when just 373 social and affordable homes were built. The only way out of it is for all political parties to work together again, just like in postwar Australia. I'm sure the National Party wants to do it. Joh Bjelke-Petersen was famous for building public housing—for saying to mining companies that they could have their lease, but they'd need to develop towns like Moranbah and Dysart.

So I implore the other side of the House: change tack. Let's work together. Support the HAFF—the Housing Australia Future Fund—which is undertaking the biggest public housing program of a generation. Support the expansion of the five per cent deposit program. Get behind National Cabinet's ambitious but necessary target to build 1.2 million homes, 100,000 of which will be for first home buyers. Get behind the Help to Buy program, in which the government will partner with buyers to share the equity and dramatically slash the cost of entering the market. Support measures which will help make life better for renters. Like the housing minister said, housing is the Labor project of our generation. But wouldn't it be even better for our grandkids if they could look at us and say that housing was the project of our generation, from all political parties—just like we look back on the postwar generation, who worked together across the parties to literally build Australia and who set us up for decades of economic prosperity.

House adjourned at 20:00

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Mascarenhas ) took the chair at 10:30.