Fiona Phillips (Gilmore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's with great excitement and relief that I rise to speak on the introduction of the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and the bill to create the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council. These bills will start the process for the largest boost to affordable and social housing we have seen in more than a decade. Make no mistake, the outcomes from these bills will ultimately fundamentally change people's lives for the better.

To say we have a housing crisis on the New South Wales South Coast is putting it mildly. We are no stranger to disasters, but the housing crisis on the New South Wales South Coast is our new disaster. Over many years, the previous coalition government did nothing to even begin to address this growing housing crisis. The housing crisis may have once been a silent crisis particularly impacting our most disadvantaged, but over many years of inaction by the previous government, it has now grown to epic proportions. As the federal member, I and my office are inundated regularly with cries for help. It is heartbreaking to hear these stories of struggle from everyday people in our community. I help where I can, but it isn't easy when there is no stock, when prices are out of control and when community housing is overwhelmed.

Our local housing and homelessness providers are doing everything possible to support people, but the reality is there just isn't enough affordable and social housing. Our local councils have also stepped upped up, trying to do their bit to ease pressures. Our community organisations, churches, businesses, individuals, unions and more have also stepped up—that true South Coast spirit I am always singing about. What was lacking was leadership at the federal level. Everyone could see there needed to be a solution, but it just wasn't there under the previous coalition government.

Gilmore, on the New South Wales South Coast, which encompasses the Kiama local government area in the north, the Shoalhaven, and the Batemans Bay, Moruya and Tuross Head areas in the Eurobodalla shire, has had a hammering, particularly over the last four years. There has been drought, the Black Summer bushfires, multiple storms, floods, landslides, roads cut, COVID, and a variety of these disasters at the same time. It really has been the unthinkable, perfect, horrible storm. It is difficult to comprehend the immense toll this has taken on people.

But what has been left, without a doubt, is the housing disaster. If it wasn't bad enough that hundreds of people lost their homes and had damaged homes from the bushfires, so began the task of finding somewhere to live. This isn't so easy when you're living on the coast and there is great demand for holiday rentals. When people found temporary housing there were heartbreaking stories of people, and people with young children, having to move out multiple times in a short space of time because the house was to be rented out in the holiday time. With COVID, the South Coast was seen as a haven, as more holiday homeowners chose to relocate to the coast—who could blame them? At the same time property prices and rents were spiralling upwards, and many property owners took that opportunity to sell, to realise the gain.

Those two actions led to devastating consequences locally. First, it shrunk the private housing stock—so if you were a pensioner that had rented and lived in the same property for 15 years, all of a sudden you had no home. Faced with soaring rents and no homes available, it was the fastest way to become homeless. One day you had a home, the next you didn't. And it didn't discriminate; it didn't matter if you were a pensioner, had a family with young kids, had a disability, were a frontline worker or even had two incomes. Second, it shrunk the stock of social housing as more landlords sold properties, so our community housing providers had fewer homes available. So where do people go? Our homelessness providers have been facing this battle each and every day. It's really one vicious cycle. Everyone knows the problem: there just isn't enough affordable and social housing.

There are many harrowing local stories. As harrowing as they are, it is important the House understands the gravity of the situation. Take this single mum of four from Worrigee. She's a hairdresser who works part-time while she tries to take care of her kids and get by. She was ahead on her rent in a private community housing supported home. She paid the bond and was doing everything right. But the house was riddled with mould—an ongoing issue that she couldn't resolve and that was making her two-year-old child sick. She did what any mother would do; she put the health of her child first. She has asked Southern Cross Community Housing for a transfer, but she can't get one. She's asked them for her bond back and for some of the rent she overpaid, to help her financially, but she can't get that either. She and her four kids have been forced to couch surf for the last year—another example of the shambles the Liberals and Nationals let our community housing become. The New South Wales government has said, 'Be sick or be homeless, and don't expect us to give you your money back.' This family has been on a priority housing list for a year, but there is no information on when they can expect a new home.

I'd like to say this is a special case, an isolated incident, but I'm sorry to say it isn't. The Moruya North Head Campground is home to around 50 people with nowhere to go. The campground is their home. There is no alternative accommodation. While local homelessness support services, council and the community do all they can to provide support and access to networks and food and essential items, the fact there is no alternative accommodation is one of the biggest blights on society I have seen. Council has continued to call on the New South Wales government to do something to help these people, but those calls are falling on deaf ears. The campground is not meant for people to live there. There is no permanent hot water and there are no enclosed showers, but, with no other sources of temporary accommodation and nowhere else for these people to go, what choice is there? While this bill does not offer an immediate solution, it starts today to correct the immense wrongs and begin the long road back to fixing the huge supply issue there is and to build more affordable and social housing.

Salt Ministries and their wonderful volunteers have been providing community meals and outreach support for the homeless for years. But the demand for somewhere to live for so many people grew and grew. SALT opened Safe Shelter Shoalhaven without the help of government funds, and it has been operating locally for the last five years. In that time, it has provided a safe place to sleep for over 850 families and individuals, but without government support, the service has twice been on the verge of closure. I first raised this with the New South Wales minister in October last year, and in December, I stood—

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