Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will be supporting the National Rental Affordability Scheme Bill 2008 and the National Rental Affordability Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2008. I concur with many of the concerns that were raised by Senator Payne around the way the scheme will actually function once it has been operating for a couple of years. We recognise that, as the government has put it, it is quite an adaptive policy and that it is intended to be changed according to the uptake—the rate at which the community sector or the private sector eventually decide to take on the scheme. We will also be following this with a great deal of interest, as the successive rounds under the NRAS roll out, to assess whether it is actually meeting the demand.

The demand has obviously reached appalling proportions. In 2007 more than one in five households in private rental spent more than 30 per cent of their income on rent and one in 10 low-income households in private rental spent more than half of their income on rent. So the scale of the issues in the private rental market is clearly very grave.

This policy is aimed at easing the undersupply of rental properties; at being deflationary; at increasing supply, thereby benefiting other renters not necessarily residing in NRAS dwellings; and at lowering the proportion of income that low- to moderate-income households spend on rent. The Australian Greens are certainly supportive of those objectives. It was made very clear to us in the course of the hearings of the brief Senate inquiry that we undertook that this scheme will not resolve the issues of housing affordability and homelessness in isolation, that it is really part of a package of measures. So we are looking forward to seeing the substance of the National Affordable Housing Agreement and other measures to ensure that everyone in Australia is adequately and sustainably housed.

I want briefly to recognise the work of the community housing sector, for providing the initial impetus and ideas for the scheme, for the enormous amount of work they have put into pursuing this and for the work that they do in the course of daily operations in providing affordable housing. They have been tireless and selfless advocates for the disadvantaged, and that came through very clearly in the hearings that were held. So the scheme has been designed to encourage their participation. Our understanding is that so far their participation has been fairly solid, certainly in the first round.

Of course, as Senator Payne mentioned, there was a near miss that looked as though it could quite seriously derail the scheme. All we really have is a temporary fix and we cannot wait around for another two years, which is all the time that the Treasurer’s media statement has bought us. We certainly cannot afford to wait for another two years before the issue of the charitable status of community housing organisations seeking to participate in the scheme is resolved. That needs to be resolved, I would suggest, in the first quarter of next year so that the scheme can roll out with a bit of certainty for everybody involved.

Another thing, which goes to the second reading amendment that have been circulated in my name, is that housing sustainability criteria were certainly addressed in the government’s policy but they were not addressed in the regulations. We need to get away from the idea that sustainability in building and building stock, particularly for people on low incomes, needs to increase the costs. In fact, there is a very strong argument to suggest that there are two components of housing affordability in the rental market: one is how much you pay in rent and the other is how much you pay in utility bills, including energy and water, and your access to employment and your access to public transport. These have not really been addressed in the regulations, so the second reading amendment that has been circulated explicitly mention energy and water efficiency and access to public transport as the criteria by which NRAS properties are judged. I do not think that there is anything all that controversial in them. I received a letter from the minister this morning suggesting that those things would be taken into account in further NRAS rounds, but I suggest that that is actually an opportunity missed. The sooner that energy and water efficiency and access to public transport are included as criteria by which these properties are judged, the better. As I said, rental is only one component of affordability. We need to be making sure that people on low incomes are not stranded in energy and water inefficient properties and that access to services and public transport has been taken into account when the properties are established.

A couple of other points were raised during the course of the inquiry. The national housing affordability summit quite strongly put to the government the idea, as future rounds of NRAS roll out, of a panel consisting of:

… a person with high-level experience in business and finance, another with substantial experience in provision of low-rent housing and a third person with expertise in schemes of this kind.

They are suggesting a panel of no more than about three people with expertise in projects such as this to ensure that the large institutional investors come on board and that this scheme actually works on the scale that the government intends. The government has announced that it is committed to reviewing the scheme after two years, but I would suggest that such a panel should be incorporated much sooner than that to make sure that the scheme is functioning as was intended.

The other thing—and I think Senator Payne picked up on this in her second reading amendment—is that 20 per cent of the incentives be available for projects of not less than 20 dwellings, and that that would not be quarantined to the first few rounds but would last for the life of the scheme. I will leave my comments there and foreshadow the Greens second reading amendment.