Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Every Australian should have a place to call home: a place they can afford, a place they feel secure, a place that gives them shelter, decency and access to everything else that comes with their innate rights as a human being. The sad reality is that the last time we saw a substantial investment in public housing and a long-term commitment to public housing was in 2008, under the Rudd government.

I pulled out the member for Sydney's speech introducing the original national rental affordability scheme bill. The challenges that it outlined are, basically, exactly the same as what we face today—11 years on. There are many low- and moderate-income earners who are stuck in the rental market. We have a situation where rent rises—as the member for Sydney said 11 years ago—are outstripping wages and inflation. There is a poor supply of rental properties and, unfortunately, because of the 2014 cap on the National Rental Affordability Scheme by the then Abbott government, we continue to see this problem across our entire country.

I personally didn't grow up in public housing, but through natural market forces my parents were able to enter the homeownership market by purchasing a house opposite the, then still operating, Fremantle prison. That was my first family home. I note that when it comes to public housing and experience, the only person who is in public housing in this chamber is, of course, the Prime Minister. I think we really need to engage with the experiences of people who rely on these sort of schemes, to make sure that they can have enough money to pay for everything else—their food, medical expenses, education and the rest.

The good thing about this bill is that it does address investor and tenant concerns with the operation of the National Rental Affordability Scheme. Ensuring that investors receive payments in a timely manner is something that Labor supports. It stops stock being withdrawn from the scheme, which then leads to increases in rent for people who may seek to stay in that particular property. It removes ambiguity in terms of the calculation for below-market rents. It is unfortunate when you have a debate between a tenant and a landlord about whether or not something is, indeed, below market. This bill will address that.

It's, proudly, a Labor program that we're talking about today. As I said before, it's one of the largest single investments in affordable housing that we've seen in recent times. Implemented in 2008, the scheme aims to have properties at 20 per cent below market rates.

The scheme initially provided for some 50,000 homes with a view that, in 2012, you would be able to expand that to another 50,000 homes once the scheme had proved successful. The fact we're amending the scheme shows that, in many ways, it has been successful—but it is only one part of that solution to provide affordable housing for Australian families.

The slash-and-burn budget of 2014 did cap the number of dwellings at 38,000. It means that we have fewer affordable properties for low-income families than we should in this country. It was criticised, and I pay tribute to the business groups that actually criticised that decision of the Abbott government. The budget of 2014 had many things wrong with it, but it was good to see people's increasing realisation about this issue. That included the Property Council and others, who have been active in my electorate in recent days and, indeed, today, advocating for more public housing.

We know that there's a need. What we have seen from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute shows that, from 2011 to 2016, government expenditure on social housing decreased some seven per cent. We know that the amount of available stock is decreasing, not increasing. Again, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute estimates that there is a deficit of some 200,000 affordable dwellings across the Australian housing market. If we wanted just to catch up, then between now and 2026 we would need to be adding an additional 17,000 homes across the nation just to deal with that deficit. So this is an important bill. It makes sure that we get a little bit down that track, but it doesn't really address those big structural challenges we have in terms of making sure that every Australian has somewhere to call home.

The sector is not just confined, of course, to the National Rental Affordability Scheme. There are some 812,000 tenants in some 396,000 households in the social housing sector across Australia. When you look at what those particular households are experiencing, the estimate is that between four and 24 per cent of those dwellings are considered overcrowded—that is, the houses are not appropriate for the people who are living in them. At the same time, between seven and 26 per cent of those houses are underutilised—that is, there is too much space for the people who are in them. Our social housing system across the states and the Commonwealth doesn't work for so many people who are relying on it.

Then you get to the people who don't even have access to that system. On census night in 2016, the estimation was that there were some 9,000 people in Western Australia who were homeless—did not have somewhere to call home, did not have a mortgage, did not have even a lease for a rental property. That night, across the country, some 116,000 Australians did not have somewhere to call home. Most of the anecdotal evidence is that these figures are increasing and increasing. Homelessness is a huge challenge in my electorate of Perth, but it's not just about numbers. For any one person who doesn't have somewhere to call home, it is a very personal crisis and a very personal tragedy. It's something we can do so much more about if we take this issue seriously.

Housing is one of the biggest costs that households face. For most families, 29 per cent of gross income is spent on housing. That's slowly increasing over time; some 25 years ago, it was just 21.9 per cent. If we were to survey any of our constituents, I think people's expectations would be that they are going to be spending a larger, not smaller, proportion of their income on housing.

I will go back to the challenge of homelessness. In Western Australia there are 13,953 applicants on the Western Australian public housing list, waiting for public housing. They might be in the private rental market paying excessive amounts or they might be staying with family and friends, but we know that a large number of those people on that housing waitlist are what we would term homeless. In the Perth CBD the estimate is that there are some 600 people sleeping rough in and around the CBD, night to night. That's completely unacceptable. I have written to the Leader of the Government in the Senate, given his actions with the Tasmanian government in terms of housing, saying that the need is probably more pressing in Western Australia than it is in Tasmania—on a per capita basis, it definitely is.

As I said before: for any individual who doesn't have access to a home, it is a personal crisis and a personal tragedy. I would love to see the state government and the Commonwealth come to an agreement on the $343 million debt that the state government is unable to repay to the Commonwealth except on the Commonwealth's own terms, so that we can invest in more social housing in Western Australia. That would be consistent with the outcomes and the goals of this bill. It would also make sure that we have more money for things such as a Common Ground facility; I know that that has been a huge success in Queensland, and I know it's been a huge success in Melbourne. These are facilities that help people with that very difficult transition from homelessness to home.

If you want people who are homeless to be able to access the National Rental Affordability Scheme, there's a step before that. We all know that that is a very complex transition from homelessness into secure, stable housing, and the first step of that is to have intense wraparound services as provided through the Common Ground model. I would love to see the government invest in one in Western Australia. The former Rudd-Gillard government invested in them across the country. Western Australia at the time was going through a spectacular boom. We did not take up that opportunity. I think in retrospect that was a mistake of the then state government, but now it is an urgent need, and I urge members on the government side to look at what they can do to make sure that we invest in housing in Western Australia.

Labor is committed and will continue to be committed to investing in housing. We took a plan to the last election to make sure that we continued this discussion through COAG. I note that the government has, even on its own priorities of the environment and reducing plastics, decided to cancel COAG for the end of the year. We don't know when the next COAG meeting is. But I know that, had Labor been elected, homelessness would have been on the agenda and COAG would have been meeting. We had a plan to build an extra 250,000 new affordable rental homes over 10 years. That would have simply cleared the backlog; it wouldn't have got us further ahead. It would have just got us back to a point where there were almost enough homes for the people who need affordable housing.

We had a commitment—which is something that I would again encourage the government to look at—for an $88 million investment in a safe housing fund to help women and children escaping domestic violence. I know, again, that in my electorate of Perth the services that provide that are constantly oversubscribed and have to move people out of their services, often before those families—those children and those women—are ready to move into a more normal tenancy arrangement. Anything that we can do in this place that would increase investment in those services and allow people to make that transition when they're escaping family violence is something that should be looked at by the government. Indeed, I think you'd find much support on this side of the House.

Affordable housing is one part of addressing poverty. This week is Anti-Poverty Week, and these things are all interconnected. You can't have a National Rental Affordability Scheme without acknowledging the other causes and impacts of poverty. We know there are some three million Australians who live below the poverty line. Of those three million Australians, 739,000 are children. In fact, one in six children are estimated to live below the poverty line. We know that those on youth allowance are some of the most likely to experience poverty, as are those on Newstart. A report released earlier this week showed that as many in one in five Australians have experienced food insecurity in the last year—that is, skipping meals. Parents have said in this report that they will choose to not feed themselves so that they can feed their children. I know that the member for Blaxland earlier spoke about the work that Foodbank does. The fact that Foodbank expanded its program in New South Wales for another 500 schools is a sign that something is not working in this country and that things aren't as they should be.

We also know that, when it comes to secure housing, people pay their rent first. The most tragic thing that can happen is for someone to have to go through an eviction. The ongoing cost of dealing with that crisis is serious. So, when rents go up, it reduces funding for food, health, schooling and all those other things. If we want to break the cycle of poverty in Australia, we have to be serious about investing in housing.

I want to put in a broader context the need not just for this piece of legislation to go through but for more action on affordable housing, national action on affordable housing. I want to put it in the context of Australia's broader human rights obligations. Housing is a human right. It is one of the most complex to deliver on, because it's not just about a piece of legislation. It's not just about saying we shouldn't discriminate. It is about a big piece of coordinated government action to build houses and to provide the economic circumstances in which houses are affordable. The right to housing is enshrined not just in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is a human right.

Some estimate that there are one billion people in the world who do not have adequate housing. In fact, the best estimate is that there are some 100 million people who you would consider are homeless by Australian and international definitions. Those numbers are hard to comprehend. There is lost economic potential in our community and our global family. Those 100 million homeless people are not making a serious contribution and are not able to make the sorts of decisions we in this place take for granted.

Let's look at where we enshrine housing as a human right. We enshrine it as a human right in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. We include it in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. We include it in the ILO conventions. We include it in the housing rights of Indigenous peoples. Housing is something we should take more action on. I do support the bill.

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