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

I rise to speak on the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023 and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023. I think every person in this place knows the housing crisis in our country is one of the most pressing issues of our time. The lack of affordable housing is adversely affecting the lives of many people in the cities and, very much, in the regions, including in my electorate of Mayo. It is a crisis that continues to grow without abatement, thwarting the ability of communities to grow and prosper. The financial burden stemming from this crisis is forcing generations into a life without homeownership, entrenching intergenerational poverty and furthering the equity divide across our country. It's hard to believe that, when I was a young woman, homeownership was a real and tangible goal, and that goal has gone. My three children really don't expect to own a home of their own. It's just not in their vision. They're educated. And yet, when I was the age of my oldest child, who is 23, I had already owned one home and I was building a second. It's just extraordinary what we've done in, really, one generation.

The government's commitment to 30,000 new social and affordable dwellings over the next five years is a step in the right direction, but I must say I don't think it goes far enough. And there's one chink in the armour, which I'm going to talk about. I'm concerned that before we actually get to those houses we're going to be in a far worse position, because unfortunately the 30,000 dwellings that have been committed to will barely replenish the National Rental Affordability Scheme, NRAS. This is going to expire, and many of its homes are going to age out before we have new homes built. We're talking about publicly available data. Around 24,000 homes are expected to age out from mid-2022 and nearly 18,000 homes from June this year.

I have raised this directly with the minister. I think there's an assumption that those NRAS properties will somehow stay in the social and affordable housing bubble. I think it's really quite bullish to assume that and we could be in for some rocky waters. If we're serious about affordable housing, we need to retain these homes; otherwise we don't have a net gain. The population has increased and the pressures on households are far more acute now than, say, a decade ago, and that's before we've even considered the needs of the 162,000 people who are on the social housing list.

I think this proposal is excellent. I've got to say a big part of the problem we're trying to fix now is because around nine years ago—I think it was in the 2014 budget—we had a cut to NRAS. We weren't building any more houses, so, wherever participants were on their 10-year contract, those arrangements were going to age out. We haven't had any new housing stock, and in subsequent years we have largely had policies that have increased the demand side of housing without addressing the supply side. It's really frustrating, and none of this is an issue that has been created in the last year. We're talking about a decade of public policy that has got us to the place we are now. So, with respect to NRAS, I would say to the government: if you have contracts in place that will age out over the next couple of years and if you have willing owners of those properties—the properties are not all sitting with NGOs—why won't you have the conversations and see if you can extend those contracts for five years or so?

With trepidation, our nation is openly discussing the impossible increases in the cost of living and the very real risk of increasing household debt. One thing that I don't think we're talking enough about is the mortgage cliff that is coming this year for so many homeowners, particularly homeowners in the first two or three years of their mortgage who locked in interest rates through to this year because of the Reserve Bank's announcements that there would be no movement on interest rates until 2024. My goodness, how wrong we were there! In my community there's real concern about people moving off their fixed rates and onto the current rates. With the most recent announcement by the Reserve Bank that we're potentially going to see more interest rate rises, there's a real fear of a recession. Analysis by KPMG suggests that approximately 800,000 loans taken out by people who took advantage of the record low fixed interest rates in 2020 and 2021 will be hit with a mortgage repayment cliff. As I said, many of these loans were taken out on the advice of our own Reserve Bank governor, but we have an impending financial disaster of proportions not seen in our recent history. In fact, I was watching a video last night where people were comparing the current situation to 1990. I was a young person in 1990; I was just 18 years of age. I remember those huge interest rates and many people selling their home because they just couldn't afford the mortgage repayments.

The concern now, though, is that the value of houses compared to people's annual income has skyrocketed. It doesn't matter where you are in Australia. When I was a young woman house values were around three times the average salary. We're now seeing in Australia in many places it is more than 10 times. We're going to get to a point where many people can't afford to sell because their house has dropped in value and is lower than the mortgage that they owe. It's going to be a terrible time for so many. This is an issue we desperately need to address.

The analysis shows that mums and dads around the country are facing an average annual interest rate increase of $16,500. Further interest rate increases will only exacerbate this problem, and they're expected to cost the economy $20 billion.

In my own electorate there was a huge population increase between 2016 and 2021, with over 33,000 people moving into my electorate, including more than 10,000 additional families moving into the area. We welcome these people with open arms, but this has made rental access incredibly difficult and rental payments have risen to close to 50 per cent of the weekly median income. This just isn't sustainable.

The $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund is a good start, but it cannot be the endgame. While these aims are positive, I do want to ensure that the regions are not left behind, as social and affordable housing programs have historically favoured metropolitan areas. Research has shown that the lack of housing in the regions is causing significant productivity losses and community pain. I will continue to urge all levels of government to ensure we have resources for affordable housing to help address homelessness and I urge the federal government to increase rental assistance and provide more federal funding for social housing support, particularly in the regions.

People are wanting to take jobs on Kangaroo Island and businesses there are desperate to hire, but there's nowhere to house people—nowhere at all. The Housing Australia Future Fund is an important step in the right direction and, equally, it is important to require the fund to allocate funding proportionate to the percentage of Australians who live in regional or remote Australia, which is currently 18 per cent.

I support these bills. This can't be the only thing we do. I think we need to work with mum-and-dad investors as well to see whether there's a way that we can have some sort of partnership with those people who want to build individual affordable houses rather than this just being large NGOs who are delivering affordable housing. We have a housing crisis right around Australia. It is felt by families, by older Australians and certainly by young people, who feel that they have been robbed of the Australian dream.

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