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That the Senate take note of the report.

I would like to take note of the final report of the Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity. I thank the committee secretariat for their hard work, their wonderful work. This Senate is so well served by its committee secretariats. I also want to give particular thanks to the 185 organisations and individuals who made submissions and appeared at eight public hearings all over the country. Your testimony was powerful. Thanks for your valuable time, your experience and your expertise. Everywhere we went across Australia, we heard that housing is a primary driver of widening intergenerational wealth inequality in Australia, that it is the primary cost-of-living issue and that this government must do more.

This inquiry revealed a housing system stacked against younger generations, who have lost the intergenerational housing lottery. This inequity is the consequence of decades of political decisions about taxation, investment and the diminished role of government in providing housing. Those decisions have turned housing from a basic human need into a vehicle for accumulating private wealth. The consequences are profound. They are profound for many people in many generations but for none more than younger generations born since the 1980s. We are witnessing a rupture in the social contract. Working hard no longer assures secure housing and the chance for a family and a decent community life.

The distance between real wages and house prices is a widening chasm. Across this country, young people have given up on the hope to one day own a home. House prices have increased by over 400 per cent since 1999—incredible. Rent increases have outpaced wage growth by several multiples. Homeownership is declining, especially amongst people in their 20s and 30s, and there have been significant increases in homelessness. Younger Australians are renting for longer, often in unstable and insecure tenures, and access to secure housing and homeownership is increasingly influenced by existing wealth and family support rather than earnings alone. That is not a fair go. It is an inheritance lottery, and it is turning Australia into a country where wealth and a decent life are increasingly determined by what you inherit.

But, of course, not everyone is losing in a housing system built around increasingly large mortgages and rising property values. Banks, the real estate industry, big developers and multiple property investors are the big winners out of the housing crisis. The big four banks made an incredible net profit of over $30 billion in the last financial year, largely off mortgage profits. When rising house prices create wealth for banks, multiproperty owners and investors, powerful interests become vested in preserving these gains. The major parties have too long responded too often by accommodating those interests and accepting their donations rather than challenging them. And they have sold out younger generations in the process, in the housing crisis.

This crisis in a very wealthy country should be a matter of national shame. It should motivate real change in our national politics and policy to recognise this crisis and to take the action we know we can do to address it. The Labor, Liberal and Greens members of this committee agreed on a set of 10 key findings. Crucially, there was no argument with the indisputable fact that Australia is in a housing crisis. There was also agreement across the parties that Australia has not built enough public housing. We are in a long-term decline—a failure to Australians out there and a failure to properly invest in public housing. This crisis is intergenerational in nature, and it is fuelling inequality. We are seeing homeless services in every state and many of our big regional towns and centres as well, where those homelessness services are stretched thin. It is really hard to be at the front desk of homelessness services all over our country now.

When it came time to make recommendations, however, Labor opted to preserve the status quo. They congratulated themselves on their meagre efforts to deal with this crisis, and the Liberals wanted to make it worse. The Greens have a different vision for housing, one where a secure home is a basic right, and we reject the idea that the solution to housing insecurity is simply to build more houses of any price. When it comes to supply, the priority must be on building the public and genuinely affordable housing that Australians urgently need, not simply adding more homes, many of them way beyond an ordinary Australian household. We need affordable homes in our housing system. Given that housing is a fundamental human need, the government's priority must be a roof over everyone's head, not maximising housing wealth for some.

We Greens made 31 recommendations to this inquiry, and our seven key priorities are as follows. Firstly, housing is a human right. We have legal obligations internationally in the instruments that we have signed up to that make sure that we recognise housing as a human right and enact that right in a practical way for all Australians. Secondly, it's vitally important that we expand public and community housing to at least 10 per cent of Australia's housing stock over the next decade.

Thirdly, we need to introduce a national rent cap and strengthen renters' rights. Nearly one in three Australians are now in rental accommodations, many of them without real rights. They're changing houses every year and disrupting their kids' schooling. There are massive changes in their lives. We need to come to upgrade and change our rental regime and cap our rents.

Fourthly, we need banks to provide a generic, low-interest mortgage product for first home owner-occupiers who are buying their own home. Banks are making a motza out of the increase in house prices across our country. Their profits are underpinned by runaway house prices, and they should be making a more significant contribution to assist first home buyers to deal with the crisis we find ourselves in.

Fifthly, we need to establish a public housing developer. We need a public-sector developer in there building homes, taking the profit out of the housing crisis and dealing with the things that we know we need to do. Sixthly, we need to reinstate a Commonwealth department of housing and homelessness so we've got proper infrastructure to deal with the crisis we're in. Lastly, we need to invest in homelessness services and prevention as a priority.

This government must put security of tenure ahead of speculative returns. Firstly, government must regulate rent increases and strengthen protections for private renters. The current rental market is the most unaffordable in Australian history, with some of the highest rates of rental stress we have ever seen. Households are caught in a rent-wage squeeze. People across the country are being hit with a six per cent increase in rents year on year, while real wages have fallen by five per cent under this Labor government's tenure. This is a rent-wages squeeze that we have never seen before, and it is putting people on the streets and into homelessness. It is time for rent caps and an end to unlimited rent increases.

Since COVID, many jurisdictions around the world have introduced various models of rent caps. We have them here in the ACT. They make a huge practical difference. A lot of stakeholders pointed to the ACT arrangement. We know rent stabilisation policies can work, and they will make a huge difference for people who are in real crisis at the moment, who do not have any protective financial buffers. Indeed, they are the buffer for their landlord. The federal government must introduce rent caps to protect renters from excessive and unpredictable rent increases.

Secondly, the government must expand massively our investment in public and community housing. At the moment, public housing is around 3.7 per cent of all housing stock. We know it needs to be up at 10 per cent if it's going to do anything to assist the 640,000 households at present in Australia who are living in a terrible housing crisis. Too many people are living with their parents—one in two people in their 20s and 30s. This is well beyond what they were doing 20 years ago. This government's pathetic attempts at building social and affordable housing do not meet existing demand. They are missing every target they have set. We need clear priorities from this government. We need a huge increase in investment. Our own history tells us we can do this. We did it in the post-World War II period. We are the third richest country on the planet. We should not have millions of Australians living in housing stress.

In concluding, this report lays bare the scale of the housing crisis. It is a call for action. We cannot ignore the evidence from the thousands of Australians out there who have the experience of housing stress and want to see action by Labor and by this chamber. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.