Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance on Australia's housing crisis. A total of 89 per cent of Australians agree that we're in a housing crisis, and it's clear why. The deliberate political choices of successive Labor and coalition governments have brought us here. Labor's policies are turbocharging house prices, with national housing prices increasing by more than one per cent in a single month in October—up by six per cent in the last year. Labor need to take accountability for house prices exploding on their watch. The solutions are clear.

I've just come from the launch of an incredibly important book by Hal Pawson, Dr Viv Milligan and Judith Yates, Housing Policy in Australia, where the minister said, 'The housing system in Australia is broken.' She went on to say, 'It's incredibly complex, finding solutions.' Yes, it takes courage. Yes, it takes political capital. Yes, it takes vision, but we will not fix the housing crisis by making it more complex through things like the HAFF, which make it more costly, more slow and sluggish and much more expensive to fix. So we need real action by the minister, which includes a National Housing and Homelessness Plan, and we need to double federal funding to states and territories for housing support for the homeless and for public and community housing. The two major parties also don't have a single policy to assist renters—not one to deal with rising rents and uncapped rent increases throughout our country towns and our cities. We need to stop unlimited rent increases and establish a national renters protection authority to enforce renters' rights.

These are all things the government could do. They are not that complex, but they require resolve. But they want you to think everything is too hard or too complex and that better is not possible. Well, it is possible. We've done it before. We did it in the postwar period. We built a lot of houses and we looked after renters. We need accountability from our government and its departments for their role in this mess. What we are seeing out of Housing Australia and the HAFF is of deep concern. Last estimates this government put Treasury in the midnight slot, and we had only 48 minutes to ask crucial questions that go to the heart of our country's housing crisis. For one of the most critical issues of our time, that shapes life chances for our kids and our families, we had less than an hour with the relevant department. Luckily we get another go this Thursday night at a spillover with Treasury and Housing Australia. I am looking forward to hopefully getting some real answers to deal with a very real crisis.