David Pocock (ACT, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

This week the National Rental Affordability Scheme, NRAS, a previous Labor government initiative, came to an end. At its peak it provided affordable rental accommodation to around 55,000 Australians across 30,000 tenancies. So, while the Albanese government's commitment to provide 55,000 new social and affordable homes through the Housing Australia Future Fund is welcome, it effectively replaces previous support rather than substantively adding to new supply. And it fails to meet need—a need estimated to be somewhere in the vicinity of a 640,000 shortfall of affordable homes. That's why I find it incredibly frustrating that, after more than four years of the two levels of Labor government here in the ACT, not a single new affordable home, despite what we heard so much about at the 2022 election, has been built on the CSIRO Ginninderra site. In fact, that site hasn't even changed hands.

Delivering new housing supply is an urgent undertaking. Both levels of Labor government need to start treating it that way here in the ACT. Senator Gallagher, the finance minister for Australia, signed off on divestment of the site in February last year—almost 18 months ago!—and yet a sale still has not happened. How is one level of government selling land to another level of government so hard? What's it going to take to get this moving? More pressure in Bean? More pressure in Canberra? More pressure in Fenner? Canberrans want, and are demanding, more action when it comes to housing, and we have an opportunity with the CSIRO Ginninderra site. The federal government and the ACT government need to get on with it now. They need to use that land to ensure that there is more affordable housing in Canberra.

We recently saw a report from the UN that found that, since the Hamas terror attack on 7 October 2023, the Israeli Defence Force has now killed 20,000 Palestinian children and injured 44,000 more. This is indefensible. The report found evidence of attacks on child essential infrastructure, like orphanages and schools, and the starvation and torture of detained children. It identified really horrifying evidence that IDF soldiers deliberately shot at children's limbs as some sort of twisted game of target practice. The report found the scale of child deaths is unprecedented, to the point where it is unparalleled across modern conflicts globally—'unparalleled'. I think we need to come to terms with what it means in this moment in history to be defined this way.

And what action is demanded of middle powers like Australia in response? We have international legal institutions to prevent this kind of catastrophe from continuing, to look at the evidence and make a determination. We have the interim findings from the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and multiple reports from the United Nations outlining the Israeli government's breaches of international law amounting to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. As a member of the international community, Australia needs to play our part in upholding international law. We must continue to demand the end of hostilities, enforce the outcomes determined by the ICJ and the ICC and further sanction Israeli government officials until they meet their obligations. To quote Shannon Bosch in The Conversation:

Under international law, children are supposed to be the most protected people in war. The children of Gaza have not just suffered in the war, they have become one of its defining legal fault lines.

This cannot go on, and I urge the Albanese government to be a middle power that stands up.