Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

N () (): I rise to speak about the recent housing initiatives introduced by the new government, particularly in the context of regional Australia and specifically in areas such as my electorate of Cowper on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. In my coastal region we've seen rents increase by as much as 50 per cent, and the price of the average three-bedroom family home has increased by over 70 per cent during that period. The issues of homelessness, rental stress and mortgage stress are ever increasing, particularly in the coastal regions, where we haven't seen a market correction like there's been in metro and peri-urban areas. The flow-on effects of city dwellers continuing to be priced out of the metro market, the ever-increasing interest rates and the greater ability to work remotely in a post-COVID era have regions like mine at breaking point.

In October last year, in response to these pressures, I called on the new government to create a national housing summit between all levels of government in order to discuss a fit-for-purpose solution. I describe the issue of housing in Australia as the slowest-moving train wreck that I've seen. I note the previous speaker's comment that it was 'the last decade'. I recall a certain prime minister, the Hon. Bob Hawke, talking about 'no child will be in poverty', and that's going back four decades. So to lay the blame for the housing crisis at the feet of the opposition is simply unfair. This is something that we need to work on together for practical solutions. We have a supply and demand issue, and we need solutions to get that supply out there quickly, and that requires a multigovernment approach. Local councils and state and federal governments need to work together to remove the red tape.

I should note that, when it comes to local government and state government, the contributions made by developers to state and local governments can often make up 60 per cent of the cost of building a house—60 per cent. So local government and state governments have a responsibility as well to look at those contributions and attempt to free up some of that red tape and some of that cost, to enable developers and builders to build cheaper buildings and not just rely on the federal government, whether it's Labor or the coalition, to hand out billions and billions of dollars when they're raking in these contributions at a local and state level.

In the six months the federal government have been in, there have been a couple of state based roundtable discussions, notably in longstanding Labor states only. With pricing and affordability in New South Wales notably exceeding other states, the question really is begged: Why? Why hasn't there been one in New South Wales? Maybe now there's a New South Wales Labor government in power, they might sit down with them. I hope so. This should be a bipartisan approach, and hopefully there will be a solution in New South Wales.

The government have introduced a number of additional programs and bills in recent months under the guise of addressing these issues. They might tell you they have been successful. I'm sorry to burst their bubble, but, for the coastal and regional areas, that is simply not the case. There are claims that over 2,700 Australians have been put into homeownership in the regions through the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee grant, but the vast majority of these are in fact in peri-urban areas. With continued limits on land releases in regions such as mine, there has been very minimal positive impact from the first six months of the scheme.

I would urge this government to adopt real and practical solutions around the supply and distribution of funds today—yesterday. Once again, we're seeing irresponsible fiscal management and the regions being treated as second-class citizens under Labor, and I ask them to change that fact.

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