Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

People in my electorate are struggling every day with the housing, homelessness and the rental affordability crisis. Following our devastating floods almost a year ago, there is still so much damage and so much destruction in our community. Almost a year on, people are living in their cars, unable to find accommodation anywhere. This is why this legislation is so vitally important. I am incredibly proud to be part of a government that is acting on that because it is a crisis and it needs to be addressed. That is why we are introducing these three bills before the House today, to implement our entire package.

These bills are a comprehensive suite of measures to build more social and affordable housing. It is one of the most significant investments in an entire generation to look at fixing this massive problem we have right across the country. At the centre of all of this is the Housing Australia Future Fund. It is one aspect of our commitment to improving housing supply and affordability. Central to that is increasing the supply of social and affordable housing and investing more in acute housing needs. In the first five years of operation, the fund will help build 30,000 social and affordable houses. Twenty thousand of these homes will be specifically for social housing, and 4,000 will be allocated for women and children fleeing domestic violence and for older women on low incomes who are at risk of homelessness. Also, the additional 10,000 homes will be for affordable housing—so vitally important—accessible to our frontline workers such as police, teachers, cleaners, all those people who worked so hard during the pandemic. Our frontline workers need to access housing.

As the Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, I cannot begin to describe how important it is to have these 4,000 homes for women and children fleeing domestic violence. This is incredibly urgent and indeed lifesaving. We know that domestic and family violence is one of the main reasons that women and children have to leave their homes. Between 2020 and 2021, 42 per cent of all clients who presented to a specialist homelessness service reported they were escaping family and domestic violence. This makes domestic and family violence the most common reason given for homelessness. That is why we need those 4,000 homes, to provide that long-term housing. As I said, we need those affordable homes for our frontline workers as well.

This is such an important, incredibly urgent, absolutely urgent, agenda that we have to have in place. It is for those reasons that I am absolutely outraged that so many across from us are opposing this bill. It is in fact shameful, very shameful that we see Liberal and National party opposing it, particularly the National Party because, for the regions, it is another example of how destructive the National Party is. I've said many times in this place that National Party choices hurt. Well, this really hurts. In my region, after the devastation of the floods, you cannot find affordable housing, you cannot find a rental and people are homeless and living in their cars—and what does the National Party come in here and do? They vote against it. That's exactly what they're going to do; they've said they'll be voting against it, voting against supporting people in our community who are desperate to access decent housing. It is reprehensible and absolutely shameful.

People in the community know. They have been saying it: 'How can the National Party walk away from the regions, from rural Australia?' That's exactly what they are doing in opposing this bill. They were in government for over a decade and did nothing in terms of addressing any of these issues. They created the crisis. And now they're shamefully opposing our action, our commitment, to fix it. I challenge any of those National Party members to come to my region and explain why they're doing it, explain to people why they're not assisting them finding a house, explain why they're not assisting people who are homeless and sleeping in their cars. You come and look them in the eye and tell them why you will not support them. It is absolutely shameful.

We are also seeing posturing from the Greens, who are saying they're opposing it. Supposedly housing is a priority for them, yet they're threatening to oppose it. That is just outrageous! It's just like the CPRS all over again. They need to rethink this and need to support what we are doing to ensure that people can find affordable and accessible housing.

This is desperate, this is urgent and I encourage all members to rethink this and support our bills. People need to find decent housing. It is an absolute human right to ensure they have dignity and access to housing. I very proudly commend all these bills to the House.

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