Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I spoke last week in the House about the residents of Millers Point and The Rocks, who were dealt a terrible blow by the state government in New South Wales last week when they were told that 293 homes would be sold in their suburbs. More than 400 residents have been told that they need to vacate their properties over the next couple of years, and it has been an incredibly distressing week for those people.

I met with residents on Saturday after a meeting was convened at rather short notice. Probably about 100 people turned up to that meeting—we gave them notice of it on Friday—and I think it shows you the depth of concern not only from the residents who are going to lose their homes if this plan proceeds but also from their friends and neighbours who are renting in the private rental market or who own their own homes and who value the rich and diverse communities that Millers Point and The Rocks are. The announcement came without warning and came as an enormous shock to many people—many are still struggling to take in what this will mean for them—who have lived in Millers Point or The Rocks all their lives, and many go back several generations.

This is a community that knows its history and has strong ties with that history. In fact, there was a terrific article in the Sun Herald over the weekend, with an interview of a woman called Glenda Cox, whose family has lived in Millers Point since the 1860s working on the docks. She said:

she said—

It is very important to remind people of the rich history of this place. It is a place where working-class people were paid by the tail to catch rats when they were trying to stamp out plague in the City of Sydney. There were people who walked the Hungry Mile hoping for work during the Depression. And this place is the bed of so much of our industrial history in Australia.

The residents I met with on Saturday are so very clear that they will not accept these moves from the state government. Part of it, of course, is concern for their own homes, but there were residents who were at the meeting who are not worried about their own homes but still care about their suburb and the community that they are part of. And they asked, quite rightly: what kind of society do we want to live in? Do we really want Sydney to become a city where only the wealthy can afford to live near the centre of the city, or do we want to be as we have always been—that is, a city that has working-class people, poor people living in social housing, quay workers and wealthy people living side-by-side in what is a central part of Australia's rich egalitarian tradition? Do we value communities; do we value history; do we value the fact that these residents have known each other and supported each other, seen their children growing up together, taken each other to doctors' appointments, helped with the shopping when someone was ill? These are communities that are so tightly knit. These people know each other and have supported each other—in some cases for generations—living side-by-side as neighbours. Are we now saying that none of this matters, that the only thing that matters is whether you can afford $2 million to buy into the area?

I believe, and Labor has always believed, that there is a role for every level of government in delivering affordable housing, including in our inner city areas. The federal government has a role, the state government has a role, local council has a role. And on Saturday we heard from local councillors who support affordable housing. I know that the state member for that area supports affordable housing. And, of course, as the federal member I support affordable housing as well. But we are being let down by a Liberal government at the state level and a Liberal government at the federal level. The Liberal government at the federal level has never supported affordable housing. We had the old Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, which saw declining public housing stock everywhere because of the underinvestment in public housing. Labor came into government and made a massive investment through the National Affordable Housing Agreement and the stimulus package. That was opposed by many of the state Liberals, including people who campaigned in their local communities, who did not want public housing built in their local communities, and Liberal councils that did not want public housing built in their local areas because they were worried about ghettos. They were not afraid to say that they did not want those types of people living in their local communities.

My electorate has been caught up in the history of public housing for many decades. It was indeed in my electorate that the urban and regional development minister in the Whitlam government, Tom Uren, negotiated the purchase of the Glebe estate, the tripartite agreement in Woolloomooloo and also the Commonwealth purchase of housing in Redfern for the Aboriginal Housing company. They were incredible measures that still bear fruit today. It is where Jack Mundey and the BLF worked together with the local community, with students, residents, activists and others to protect the built heritage of our community and to protect the fact that we have a diverse inner-city community as well.

Our Social Housing Initiative, during the global financial crisis, was the most significant investment in public housing in the history of Australia. There were 19,700 new homes built from stimulus funding alone and more than 80,000 homes upgraded and in some cases returned from dilapidation—a lack of repair that saw them nearing the end of their natural life or even not being used, despite the desperate need for public housing estates in Australia, because they were in too poor a condition. So almost 20,000 new homes were built and 80,000 homes upgraded.

The National Rental Affordability Scheme as well is a sterling effort from a Labor government. It has seen 14,000 new homes built so far for people on low incomes and 24,000 more homes are in the pipeline. There are a range of other housing programs, but the third one I have to mention today, because it goes right back to the people who are facing losing their homes in Millers Point in the Rocks, is the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, which expires on 30 June. People who are running homelessness organisations still have no certainty about their funding. They have been told they will have to wait until the budget in May to be told whether they can continue to pay their staff and whether they can continue to run their programs. Any good manager of a business knows that you cannot make a decision in the middle of May to wind up a business in June, if that is the decision you are making. And if you have staff who think they are going to lose their funding on 30 June they are already looking for other work, for other places to go.

We have here, unfortunately, two levels of government—the state Liberal government and the federal Liberal government—that are both showing a complete lack of regard and a complete lack of interest in providing affordable housing to ordinary Australians, to key workers, families and sole parents. On top of that, people in that group who risk slipping into homelessness if they lose their homes do not have the comfort of knowing that there will be homelessness services. That is slender comfort, I know, but they can only have the ability to say, 'Well, that's okay, if we lose our homes there will be someone there to help us,' because the expiry on 30 June of the national partnership on homelessness means that we could see people like these hundreds in Millers Point who will lose their homes, being displaced, being told that they will have to move elsewhere, being told they will have a few choices and that if they do not want to move to outer Sydney, the Central Coast or the Illawarra then: 'I'm afraid we can't help you.' We could have not only that displacement of these people moving out of public housing but the attack on the National Rental Affordability Scheme, which is quite plainly and quite openly a softening up of this very successful scheme for cutting in the budget.

Thirdly, we have got a refusal to sign on to new funding for homelessness, which means tens of thousands of Australians let down. It means homelessness services closing. It means the terrific work we have done, the new facilities we have built and the new programs we have launched ending on 30 June without a commitment to further funding.

See this speech in context