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

I'll take the interjection, that it's all red, because over the past three years Queensland have sold hundreds of social and affordable houses. In New South Wales, they've sold $3.5 billion worth over the past decade, which equates to about 4,000 social and affordable homes. Victoria, to their credit, built 74 homes in two years. South Australia has sold 20,000 social and affordable homes over the past 20 years. That's a thousand homes a year. The Western Australian government sold off more than they built, and Tasmania sold off $50 million between 2014 and 2018.

We're asking ourselves why there is a shortage of homes and why there is a 10-year waiting list. If I could ask the Labor government to do anything it would be to tether that money, to have outcomes that the states and territories must follow and, if they don't, cut their funding. We cannot continue to make the same mistake time and time again, where we're pushing money out the door—$5 billion a year to the states and territories plus another $1.5 billion for rental assistance—when the states and territories aren't using the money that we are giving them for the purpose of building homes. It is simply not good enough. I said that I didn't care what colour that government, state or territory was—and I don't. They should be held to account.

Regarding the HAFF, I have to agree that it is a Ponzi scheme. It is $10 billion with the expectation that investment into equities will achieve a profit. There's always a risk. It was forecast that the interest alone in the first year would cost over $300 million. If we're going to make a difference to housing then we need to work together on all levels: local, state and federal.

I'll give two examples in my electorate over the past term. The first one was in Kempsey. The local government worked with me and the state member then, Melinda Pavey, to convert a disused ambulance station into 26 one- and two-bedroom units for people facing domestic and family violence. That is currently being built. It was that collaboration between local, state and federal governments that made that happen. In Bellingen, with the Freemason society, the local government and the state government converted an old aged-care facility into 48 units for women over 55, a group that we know are the most vulnerable to homelessness.

Those small steps, working together, are how we solve housing crisis. But we have to do it together and we have to do it now.

See this speech in context