Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to echo the words of the member for Lilley and again call on the government to do more. This bill, the National Rental Affordability Scheme Amendment Bill 2019, goes to the National Rental Affordability Scheme, which was, of course, a Labor initiative. It was an idea that was brought in in 2008 by the Rudd government because the Rudd government understood that there is a spectrum of people in terms of housing affordability. On one end on the spectrum, you have people who can own their own home. Some people are lucky enough not to have much of a mortgage. It goes right through to people who are sleeping rough and don't have much at all. Of course, somewhere along that spectrum are people who face rental stress, economic stress, for their own home and their own family. The National Rental Affordability Scheme was about making sure more people could afford to live in their own home because, ideally, that's what we want. All Australians should have their own home, a safe place to come back to at the end of the day.

The National Rental Affordability Scheme is a joint collaboration between state and federal governments. It provides incentives for private investors to lease properties to the NRAS, the National Rental Affordability Scheme, for tenants at 20 per cent below the value market rate. That 20 per cent was sometimes all it took to be able to maybe get your extra groceries, your food, your medicines or, as the member for Lilley rightly points out, your kids' footy shoes. It can be the difference, because, wherever along that spectrum you might be, sometimes just a small difference can make a huge impact.

But as with many things that happened in the transition from the Labor government into the Abbott government—much like the NDIS—the National Rental Affordability Scheme is an example where the policy that was originally put forward by the Labor government was amended and cut by the Abbott government. While the original targets were 50,000, the Abbott government brought that down to 38,000. If that had been based on demand, that might have been a reasonable thing, but it wasn't. It was, like many things, a way of saving the government money. Like many things with the Abbott government, it targeted Australia's most vulnerable people—people who were in need of just a small amount of assistance to be able to afford their own home.

At the last election, we in the Labor Party recognised that the problem of housing affordability is not going away. In fact, it's only getting worse. I've said it before in this place and I'll say it again now: we absolutely need to learn lessons from the last election. There were things that we didn't get right. But I don't think having a plan to ensure that Australians who need a home, wherever they are on the spectrum of housing affordability, can get a home was something that we got wrong. I think having a plan to ensure that people who need a home can get a home—

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