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

Well, The Wizard of Oz got it right: there's no place like home. Home is the physical embodiment of the people who inhabit it. No wonder it's such a special place for so many. For most, home has taken on a special significance in the last year. The problem is that the COVID situation has actually exacerbated housing issues in the nation, particularly in my community. I would argue that we are facing a tsunami in the months ahead with respect to housing security and housing availability, both in the private rental market and in the home-buying market, for low- to middle-income earners.

When I was in my early 20s and buying my first home—something that very few people in their early 20s can do now—the average house price in my community was around three times the average annual income. Housing affordability has stretched, and average house prices across the nation are now up to 12 times the average income. This is just not sustainable. As for rentals in my electorate, I can tell you there is no rental stock. Airbnb is huge in regional areas. It may not be huge in the town of Lameroo, in the member for Barker's electorate, which is clearly very affordable. I can tell you, if you have an electorate that has the ocean or that has wineries, Airbnb is huge. What that means is that it takes properties out of the usual rental market.

Down in Victor Harbor, in the south coast area of my electorate, if you do a realestate.com search and you look for properties under $300, you can get a lined shed in somebody's backyard for $145; you can get a one-room—one room, not a bedroom plus a room—bedsit for $185 a week, which is like a motel room; and, in Port Elliot, there is one small two-bedroom unit for $220 a week. That's it, for a population of more than 15,000. There are just two three-bedroom homes, and they average around $380 a week. If you look in the Hills part of my electorate, the township of Nairne does not have one single rental property for under $400 a week—not one. In the Mount Barker area, there is not one single house or unit under $307 a week, which is the new JobSeeker amount. In fact, the cheapest place listed is a two-bedroom unit, at $340 a week.

So, really, with the high cost of rentals and the lack of rental availability, is it any wonder we have more and more people in our communities who are living in tents, in caravan parks or in their cars? Families are living in cars. In 2001, just 20 years ago, I don't think anyone would have believed it would be commonplace for families to be living in cars, but it is in 2021. And it is not just families. Older women are the fastest growing group of homeless people. They are at such risk, with such vulnerability.

The reason why I said there's going to be a tsunami in housing affordability is that the National Rental Affordability Scheme that the government, in their wisdom, decided to cut eight years ago—they thought there were rorts going on—was never replaced with another rental affordability scheme. That scheme meant that there was a stack of housing stock on the market, around 35,000, from memory, and they were to be available at no more than 80 per cent of market rental in the area. There was a 10-year agreement, so those properties were tied to that for 10 years, but they are ageing out. We just had 3,000 age out nationally last year, and another 33,800 are going to come out from now over the next five years. That's 33,000 rental homes that will no longer be on the market.

Average house prices in Adelaide have skyrocketed. The average house price is now $510,000. Is it any wonder that young people can't afford to get in?

So what do we need? I believe we need a new national strategy, a new version of the NRAS, perhaps with mum-and-dad investors involved as part of the solution to affordable rentals. We need the state governments around Australia to open up land. They don't do it, and so the price is skewed by your house build, where everything is in the land and not in the purchase of the house. We need to ensure that state taxes around stamp duty are reduced. And this government needs to have a plan for vulnerable older Australians, and it doesn't.

Dorothy said, 'There's no place like home.' Let's fix this. We are capable of doing it. Let's stop just wasting time in this place, as we have for years.

See this speech in context