Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Late last year I visited a school in Goldstein to speak to the students. After the event, one of the children in year 5 approached me to ask about inflation and when I thought it would stop rising. She said, 'My mum and dad are really worried. They are fighting, and I am worried we might lose our house.' In general, Goldstein is a well-off community, but not everyone is comfortable. This exchange illustrates how the cost and supply of housing, coupled with cost-of-living issues cut across demographics. Young, low-income and single people, especially older women, struggle to enter the market. Those who are in the market are often saddled with enormous mortgages and the impact of rising interest rates, as we're seeing now. Unfortunately, many who bought into an inflated market are now struggling with increasing rates.

Young families and couples, even with both adults working, particularly in suburbs in Goldstein like Bentleigh, McKinnon, Highett, Cheltenham and Hampton East with median house prices of between $1.2 and $1.8 million, are forced to resort to crystal ball gazing now, while the Reserve Bank issues opaque guidance and its governor briefs investment bankers behind closed doors rather than providing clarity to the public. While this may fly in the face of perception of Goldstein, housing stress is high, with very low social housing stock. In the city of Glen Eira, for example, more than 42 per cent of houses are paying high mortgage repayments and almost 47 per cent are paying what is defined as high rental payments. More than a third of renting households are paying more than 30 per cent of their income on rent. Renters, an increasingly large proportion of the Australian population, largely can't access the kinds of decades-long leases available in Europe that provide stability of accommodation. Instead, they are forced into bidding wars for often below-par housing.

In some of the wealthier precincts in my electorate, there are older women, separated from their long-time partners, who have a house but don't have the income to maintain it. In one such precinct, a four-bedroom house recently came up for rent. It couldn't be heated properly, there was significant water damage and it had not been repaired between tenants. For all that, 50 family groups were so desperate to get a roof over their heads that they all turned up to make applications. In addition, few of our older rented homes are fit for purpose and there are few incentives for landlords to make the improvements that would do much to help us to get to net zero. Landlords get tax relief if a stove breaks down and they replace it but nothing if they seek to improve the quality of the appliances or the energy efficiency of the rental property they own. This is a hole in our tax laws, which have become a general no-go zone in the discussion about housing policy.

As you will have gathered, I see this government's initiative on housing as a start but not a full solution. The policy provides for 30,000 social and affordable homes in five years, plus another 10,000 affordable and well-located homes delivered between the federal government, the states, local government and institutional investors via a housing accord. Yet we need to build 36,000 houses per year until 2036 just to catch up with demand. This puts the 6,000 social and affordable homes proposed per year—and we have to find the land, people and materials to build them—into perspective. The government's budget also has each home costing just over $68,000.

Lack of housing, both social and affordable, is a particular problem for one very big cohort: women. Older women are at greater risk of homelessness than any other group. According to a 2020 report by the Housing for the Aged Action Group and Social Ventures Australia, the number of older women at risk of finding themselves without a home was 405,000. According to the Mercy Foundation, women over 55 are at great risk of financial and housing insecurity due to systemic and compounding factors like lack of superannuation, working part-time or casually throughout their lives, taking time out of the workforce to care for family, bearing the brunt of the gender pay gap, an increasingly unaffordable private rental market and age discrimination. The proposed Housing Australia Future Fund specifies 4,000 homes for women and children fleeing domestic violence and older women on low incomes at risk of homelessness. This is welcome but it's inadequate. It is just one per cent of the women identified by the Mercy Foundation as being at risk.

Labor went to the election promising to fund the HAFF off-budget to the tune of $10 billion. The government estimates the fund will generate an annual surplus of $500 million to spend. This is subject to the vagaries of the investment market. According to authoritative advice to my office, there is the risk that the amount of money available to the fund is far less than the land value required, the build costs and debt required versus the income yield and capital growth of the fund. In short, whether the fund is underfunded remains a reasonable question that also raises a second one: will the government guarantee the fund if there's a shortfall?

There is also the key question of governance. What does the government's claim of independence for the new council really mean? Strong oversight and clear guidelines for any grants paid are critical for the integrity of the fund and public confidence in it. We don't want this to be at risk of another colour-coded spreadsheet exercise.

The questions for the government and the minister are many. There are many bodies involved, and experience tells us that opens the way to blame- and responsibility-shifting. What will be the lines of accountability to deliver the number of homes proposed? Why does the National Housing and Homelessness Plan not sit with one of the new bodies being created under this package? Will the fund capital be sufficient to fund delivery, and is it to be a permanent capital base? What happens after the first five years of the fund's operation? We need more detail. My office has had discussions with the minister's office on these matters, and I am grateful for that engagement. I would argue, though, that these questions and potential gaps in this legislative package need to be addressed before it passes both houses.

The legislation appears to provide for many owners and stakeholders, which makes it even more important that the funding decisions, approvals and independent advice by the council are genuinely independent and that reporting requirements to the parliament are regular, timely and transparent. Unusually, to my eye, the legislation proposes that a member of Treasury sit on the independent council. Treasury has the personnel and funding to brief the council, yet the council doesn't have its own internal resources—which means it runs the risk of being dependent on lopsided advice from a conflicted source. The council needs its own source of advice, I would argue, and the ability, staffing and funding to commission its own independent research data and analysis. This is not just a problem in this instance; it's a problem for other independent boards appointed by the government to provide supposedly independent advice, the Reserve Bank board being one example.

At a minimum I have argued to the minister's office that we need the following: that the forthcoming 10-year National Housing and Homelessness Plan have in-built regular review requirements, with reference to this legislative package and its interim impact, every two years; that the minister report to parliament at the above intervals and table the outstanding shortfall of social and affordable rental housing; that the discretion of the minister be limited in relation to disbursements from the fund, and that there are clear guidelines for grants paid; and that the fund be maintained at the end of five years at a minimum. I understand that the government's trying to futureproof the fund so that it exists in perpetuity, and that this is a difficult task given the scale of the problem.

It's also important that all housing built or upgraded via the fund must meet best practice levels on energy efficiency with a seven-star rating, not just that housing built under the accord. The government has climate change and addressing the housing crisis at the top of its agenda. Whatever the complexities of dealing with state governments and community housing organisations about delivery of this plan, the issue of energy efficiency should not be ignored. Too many of our homes are already not fit for purpose. Renters and owners on lower incomes either cannot get or do not have the resources to upgrade their homes or rental accommodation. And then, as we're seeing now, their energy bills bite into their household budgets even more than they should. We'll also be making it even harder to get to the target of 43 per cent by 2030, let alone net zero.

Further, I argue that the body tasked with providing independent advice is genuinely given this responsibility and enshrined with the powers to do so, and that the need for a national regulatory system is addressed. Why is this responsibility of one of these bodies not being set up to achieve this? Is it not important, as we're saying we're taking housing seriously as a national issue, that there is also a regulatory system to deliver it? We need to ensure that state and local governments are incentivised to match new social and affordable housing targets and are facilitated to partner with institutional investors.

Lastly, these bills need a specific gender lens and a gender impact statement with specific reference to affirmative action for women. The Housing Affordability Fund must urgently address the compounding disadvantage for women.

Overall, it's a great aspiration to tackle the housing crisis. I will support this package in light of that, because something has to give, but I ask the government to take on board these remarks, gathered and synthesised from experts and key stakeholders, because the genuine feedback is that this package is full of holes.

See this speech in context