Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I am broadly in support of the intent of the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Housing Affordability) Bill 2017, but Centre Alliance reserve our position in the Senate. As many of the speakers have already said, there are two main elements to this bill: the establishment of an Automatic Rent Deduction Scheme for social-housing tenants and a tightening of provisions related to the National Rental Affordability Scheme, also known as NRAS.

The object of NRAS was to encourage large-scale investment in housing to increase the supply of affordable rental dwellings and reduce rental costs for low-income households. The technical legislative changes to NRAS that are before us today are welcome and, in my view, non-controversial. However, I would like to take this opportunity to speak out about why NRAS more broadly has merit and why it should be revived in the sense of us ensuring that we have some further funding going into the future in order to buy more housing stock.

NRAS was an opportunity for community organisations and mum-and-dad investors to be part of the affordable-housing solution. We need investors outside of state governments to grow affordable housing stock. That is the reality. Before I came into this place, I had the great privilege of working for an organisation that's called SYC, formally known as the Service to Youth Council. Their branch that looks after young people is known as HYPA. They were able to expand their transitional housing due to the NRAS. Because it was able to supplement the small amount of rent, they were able to offset the cost of building housing stock.

With respect to the Service to Youth Council, they had seven units from 1991 until ultimately 2009-10. However, by the end of the scheme in 2012, they had been able to increase those seven units in a very short period of time to 39 units. What did that mean? That meant that we had scores of young people supported with transitional housing and it provided wraparound services of youth workers in the afternoon and an overarching social worker who could ensure that there was case management for all of those young people and at no point was a young person charged more than 30 per cent of their income, which was often primarily youth allowance, to cover their rent. The scheme is successful for Service to Youth Council and that is because the focus is on it being transitional housing and equipping young people with the skills needed in order to successfully transition into the private rental market after a couple of years.

So I would urge the government to ensure that there is a policy lever for the wider Australian community, whether that be community organisations or mum and dad investors, to be part of ensuring that we have wide housing stock for affordable housing and that, ultimately, meaningfully addresses homelessness, more than anything else.

I'll move on now that I've talked about NRAS. I have beep talking about NRAS in this place for a couple of years. But I'd also like to talk about the Automatic Rent Deduction Scheme. Firstly, Centre Alliance, as a party takes a very dim view—and I've said this many times to governments, to ministers and to their advisers—when you do not disclose the costs associated with a policy. How can I, as a democratically elected member in this place, vote on to the government's proposed legislation when the government refuses to state how much it's going to cost? It is actually offensive that the government will not share with the parliament, as part of their decision making, how much of Australian taxpayers' money it's going to cost. That's the critical key here. This money does not belong to government. This is the taxpayers' collective pool of money. So, when you don't disclose it, it makes it extremely hard for me to support it. I find this lack of transparency and accountability actually quite offensive, and I hope that there are government ministers or decision makers in their team who are listening to this. I want to maintain constructive relationships with you. Centre Alliance wants to maintain constructive relationships with you. But, in order for us to have a strong working relationship with government, you need to be transparent with your policy settings. It is simply not good enough for the community that I represent to hide the monetary cost or benefit to the taxpayer.

Aside from the lack of transparency, there are a few other issues that I think are important to raise. There is merit in organisations having levers with the primary purpose of reducing homelessness caused by tenants falling into arrears. I also recognise that managing rental income is an administrative burden on state government housing departments where they have a large volume of stock and also on community housing organisations. I've yet to hear, should this legislation go through, whether either state governments or, indeed, community housing organisations are prepared to place what they will be saving with such an automatic scheme back into extra stock. I and Centre Alliance have some concerns with this legislation; however, as has been mentioned by many people in this House, those concerns will be examined further in another place.

I think the first concern and issue that we need to address is: should automatic deductions apply to all tenants or should it be a mechanism available for tenants who regularly fall into arrears? If this is a blanket payment for all tenants who are on Centrelink benefits, we will effectively create two classes of tenants in the community housing and public housing sector: those who are receiving a Centrelink payment and those who are in employment. I think we need to look very carefully at whether there will be some negativity associated with having two classes of tenant. Secondly, should there be a time limit for the automatic deduction? My belief is that it should really only apply for tenants who fall into arrears and, secondly, it should be for a temporary period of time—a maximum of, say, 12 months. After that time, one would like to think that the housing authority, whether that be public or a community based housing organisation, has been able to support the tenant to ensure that they don't fall into arrears in the future.

We also need to look at whether there should there be a limit on the capping. Should there be a limit to the amount of money that goes to arrears deducted from the Centrelink payment? We need to examine what safeguards will be in place so that tenants are not left with zero income simply because, in that fortnight's payment, their whole money went towards their housing. Ultimately that could lead to some disastrous outcomes where a person doesn't have any money for food, for medical needs and for ensuring that their children are supported to continue their education. I don't think there is a member in this chamber who wants to see a person destitute. The debts can be paid over a broader period of time. When I was with the Service to Youth Council and managing that housing program that I talked about earlier in my speech, we would work constructively with tenants who fell into arrears to ensure there was flexibility around their payments and really work from a position of goodwill to ensure that that debt could be paid quickly, recognising the other debts and commitments that they had.

In closing, while I will support this bill in this House, I'll be looking forward to working with the minister and his team—and, of course, the department—to ensure that this piece of legislation is in its best possible position when it's in the other place.

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