Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] Social housing was once viewed by Australian governments as an important safety net for low-income families. But over the last 30 years this has changed, and Australia is now facing a social housing time bomb, with looming shortfalls of nearly 200,000 homes by 2031. A report released this week from Compass Housing Services has outlined that across the country there were approximately 169,000 households on social housing waiting lists. In my home state of South Australia, the current waiting list is 17,051.

We're at a tipping point. We need the federal government to step in immediately with more support for social housing. This can't be like the bushfires, the lockdowns, hotel quarantine or many other issues that Scott Morrison has tried to palm off as state problems. Homeownership rates have fallen across the nation. The cost of living has gone up right across Australia. Too many Australians simply cannot afford to compete for housing in the sales or rental market. There is a national problem that cries for federal leadership.

What's more problematic is that, whilst all of this is happening, we are allowing companies to funnel money, by way of JobKeeper payments, from the taxpayer through to the wallets of executives and investors—billions of dollars that should not have been spent on some of these companies. They didn't need it, and they claimed it legally but without ethical consideration. This money could go to a number of social housing programs.