Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I rise tonight to talk about the National Rental Affordability Scheme Bill 2008 and related legislation. It is certainly welcome legislation. On many occasions I have spoken in this House—in this very chamber, in fact—about the concerns that I have in my own electorate of Forde, but what I would like to do tonight is talk a little bit about the rental scheme bill, some of the extreme situations that exist in the electorate of Forde and why a piece of legislation like this is so important. It fits a raft of programs and plans that the Rudd government has put together. I should say at the outset that, like my colleague who has just spoken, it does concern me that the opposition have a particular view on this legislation. We understand the opposition are there to oppose our legislation, but I think it is probably obvious from the lack of speakers on their side that they feel that this legislation is very important. I am happy for them to support it where they can.

In this issue of housing affordability, whether we are buying or renting in this case, we need to put forward incentives to spur on the rental housing market. We looked at different schemes of different governments when we were forming our plan and our election commitment to take this particular piece of legislation forward. We looked at ways of reducing the concern of and the stress on people who are trying to rent.

While I will quite often argue the benefits of commercialisation, I will certainly also argue the benefits of social infrastructure and the provision by governments of certain services. It is very interesting to see the concern for markets and ultimately market forces in the global economic situation we now have. Markets do fail. There is a need for intervention by governments at different levels at different times, and I should say that in this country we should not be at all concerned that governments have to step up to the plate and get involved to ensure that people who are affected by something as important as housing get the support of government. This is a time when you can see the need for governments to provide some basic services, whether it is in social ownership or in so many different ways.

The fact is that public housing is of utmost importance. If we expect the market to provide something as essential as a roof over a person’s head, we can see when this fails that it is not a case of having time—that markets will correct themselves, cycles will move on and people will be able to afford or get access to housing. When people do not have a house, do not have a roof over their head, it creates so many other social problems. I think this is what is missing when the opposition argue points of this bill. This is not an academic argument. It is not about what we can or should or could not do or where we might make comparisons.

I was intrigued by the emotive speech of the member for Kalgoorlie. He was saying that nowhere else in the country are there problems like those in his electorate. His electorate is different. All of our electorates are different. We have hot spots and we have areas that have different concerns. A mining boom creates certain problems—in fact, larger problems—but there is a benefit in a mining boom. There is a large amount of money flowing into that particular economy. In regions like mine, the effect on people is very much about other demands and market forces that mean that people who were previously able to access affordable housing have now found themselves out on a limb and with no solutions.

The fear for me and certainly my electorate is that even some of the very affordable housing is disappearing. While we might prefer not to have people living in mobile home parks, they have provided a certain level of housing and even emergency housing. But the growth in the demand for land has meant that we are now getting to the point where even these options are fast disappearing, certainly from the electorate of Forde. We have had a major mobile home park close down, so even people who are in transitional accommodation phases are let down by that.

I will go back to the bill and talk about what it is going to provide, and apply that to how it will help the seat of Forde. As I said, the National Affordability Rental Scheme is an integral part of the government’s $2.2 billion affordable housing package, with the aim, of course, of increasing the supply of affordable rental homes. The object of the bill is to encourage large-scale investment in housing—and I note that it is investment; this is about government being involved at a level that will stimulate the sector—by offering an incentive to participants in the National Rental Affordability Scheme so as to increase the supply of affordable rental dwellings and reduce rental costs for low- and moderate-income households. The scheme offers incentives to providers of new dwellings on the condition that they are rented to low- and moderate-income households at 20 per cent below market rates.

We have heard other speakers talk about this, but it is important to reiterate that the National Rental Affordability Scheme will provide up to 50,000 new rental properties across Australia at a cost of $623 million in the first four years. As has been stated, if market demand remains strong, another 50,000 rental properties will be made available over five years from July 2012.

I mentioned the 50,000 properties and the initiative by this government to provide incentives for investment. This was not possible under previous government schemes. We had a number of schemes that were worthwhile causes or worthwhile for a period of time in our history, such as rental assistance and the First Home Owner Grant. But if you do not have an overall plan for or an understanding of what rental affordability and availability, particularly high rents, will do to a community then the whole thing falls flat. I mentioned market forces before; the previous rental assistance schemes basically brought on market failure. There was nothing to prop up the fall from that position. So the government providing an incentive for investors to get into a particular type of market is very important.

As has been mentioned, the incentive of $6,000 per dwelling per year and then the contribution from states and territories of that other $2,000 either in dollars or in kind will certainly go a long way toward encouraging developers and other investors to enter into that market. The incentive will be provided each year for 10 years to complying participants and will be indexed in line with the rental component of the consumer price index.

We are in the middle of a housing crisis. We understand that. We know that. Members from the other side of the chamber had a go when they were in government. They put a number of incentives in place, but 12 years later they do not work. We have an extreme shortage of rental housing, and generally getting the market primed is what this legislation is about to do.

Nowhere is the rental housing shortage more evident than in my electorate of Forde, and I gave you some examples of the changes that have occurred. To give you some on-the-ground examples, in September 2006 the median rent for a three-bedroom house in the Beenleigh, Eagleby and Mount Warren Park area was $245 per week. The most recent data from the Residential Tenancies Authority in Queensland, for September this year, put the median rent at over $300 per week—and that is the median rent, so obviously there are different extremes of that.

I should mention Eagleby. For those who know the region of Forde, Eagleby has always been seen as an area with low-cost accommodation—certainly for rental but also for purchase. Because the demand for housing has been so high and because investors have been able to get a guaranteed return on their investment, homes in Eagleby that were $150,000 to buy only a few years ago are now $400,000. This is pushing people directly out of the market in terms of being able to purchase a home, but people who want to rent in that particular area are certainly out of the market as well. In Beaudesert, which is very much a small regional town, the median rent in September 2006 was $270 for a three-bedroom house; now, in September 2008, it is over $320 a week.

My electorate takes in the Gold Coast hinterland, so I have three local authorities. I take in the new Scenic Rim Regional Council, which is very much a rural area, of which Beaudesert is a township, and the areas of Tamborine Mountain and also the northern Gold Coast, from Beenleigh to Yatala. The rate of people moving into even those areas of Queensland is a net figure of over 1,500 a week. Whether economic conditions and changes mean that that may slow down, the reality is that that is the demand that we have on our region at the moment. Without any direct support immediately to get more rental housing in place, I can only see our conditions becoming more extreme. Essentially, that is why people are moving out of some of the higher density areas into regional towns within the electorate. But of course we then have another problem in my electorate of Forde of poor road infrastructure and transport infrastructure. So we have a range of other social problems that come out of this.

To give you an understanding of that, on the northern end of the Gold Coast rents have risen in two years from $335 a week to over $400. As I said, that demand and that condition continue. If you look at the overall state of Queensland, the vacancy rates sit somewhere between 1.4 and 3.7 per cent. The member for Kalgoorlie pointed out that he has some extreme circumstances; the state of Queensland is no different. The mining areas of Queensland fall into that same category. My electorate, as I said, has vacancy rates as low as 1.4 per cent, which causes a huge amount of pressure. My concern is that, without schemes like this, people moving further out to get affordable or just available housing is going to have major potential for a lot of social discomfort.

It should be pointed out that the city of Brisbane has undergone a lot of regional planning in the last five to 10 years and so there has been an accommodation made for more high-density accommodation, including rental accommodation. So, to a large degree, the metropolitan areas are not as stressed as areas like the electorate of Forde. As I said, people are being pushed out into areas that are unserviced. Again, a major overall part of our Building Australia approach is putting money into infrastructure and being able to provide more and more infrastructure. If we bring all those conditions together—more investment in rental properties, more investment through the first home owners scheme, which I will talk about more in a minute, and other incentives we have put in place—and if we can build more infrastructure and have more physical and transport infrastructure put in place, it is going to service people very well.

One of the things that have concerned me to an increasing degree is not only the availability of rental property but simply the ability of local authorities to allow planning to proceed at a rate that would allow this sort of construction to take place. There are incentives to invest and build more rental accommodation. There will no doubt be a fair amount of higher density accommodation built through that process, and councils can respond reasonably quickly. But the problem is that the demand in areas like mine means that councils just cannot keep up with approvals. The extra resourcing that will be required by these local authorities will mean that we are probably going to need to consider how we make these changes and get this new accommodation put in place.

Looking at some other initiatives of this government, we have been bringing local governments together to talk about infrastructure and how that infrastructure will work and the priorities. We can package that together and certainly have an understanding that certain infrastructure will go further in allowing us to build more rental accommodation quicker and also go further for those people who may decide to build new homes. The wonderful thing is that, yes, you can buy homes to some degree at a reasonable rate and you can have them built at a fairly quick rate, but available land is the major pressure certainly in the electorate of Forde. I have spoken in this House, even in my maiden speech, about the amount of available open space and new areas. However, planning is way behind. We will not have the ability to undertake any massive rollout of built environment for a number of years. That concerns me but, again, I believe that, through the initiatives of the Rudd government, working closer with local governments will resolve many of these issues.

State governments have a role to play and have been responsible for this. If you look at rental properties and public housing in Queensland, you will see that, because of the lack of funding coming out of the federal government for many years, the Queensland government has had to make some hard decisions about how it prioritises housing. Of course, that is happening in metropolitan areas. Areas like mine have been left to work out their own solutions. Having this sort of legislation and these sorts of incentives will make it much better for regions like mine.

A range of initiatives were released last week by this government to help prime the economy and ensure that we have continuing growth. The housing incentives, such as the tripling of the first home owners grant to $21,000, will certainly go a long way. To ensure that local authorities can understand the priorities we as a government have to solve ultimately our housing shortage problems they need to work more closely with us.

I spoke last time in this House about the lack of road and transport infrastructure. Those in the chamber that evening heard me talk about Duck Creek Road, which raised a lot of eyebrows—some people know where Duck Creek Road is and others do not. It is an interesting part of the electorate that services O’Reilly’s guesthouse. People from South-East Queensland know the history of the O’Reilly family and the famous Stinson wreck. Duck Creek Road is only one piece of infrastructure—and I spoke about that at length—and getting road infrastructure with transport infrastructure with good housing infrastructure and services is very much what we have to do to complete the picture. I believe this government has put together a whole range of initiatives that package up the solutions for our future and our future growth.

I could talk for a long time about the problems in the electorate of Forde. I believe that problems can be solved. Legislation like this goes a long way for me as a federal member to say that I, as the representative of my constituents, am doing the job and this government is doing the job. This is going to provide enormous relief for families who are really hurting. I am sure the member for Throsby’s constituents have similar issues to deal with. For members on both sides of this House, working towards solutions for our communities is our No. 1 priority. I commend this legislation to the House.

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