Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the usually delightful member for Macnamara has just demonstrated, this is a government that likes to talk a lot about all the help it's providing to Australians, but when push comes to shove they haven't got much to show when it comes to addressing Australia's housing crisis. In Flinders we have hundreds if not thousands of people who live rough along our foreshore. In 2021 the Salvation Army's Social Justice Stocktake suggested that some 2,600 people are homeless.

I meet pretty regularly now with those who provide emergency accommodation for the homeless in my electorate. I single out for commendation and gratitude two of the most extraordinary and tireless community leaders, Ben Smith of the Mornington Community Support Centre and Jeremy Maxwell of the Southern Peninsula Community Support and Information Centre, who, together with their teams, do the most amazing job looking after those in need and especially those sleeping rough in our foreshore precincts. They tell me that the peninsula is now the sixth-largest rough sleeping area in the state of Victoria. Emergency, public and low-cost housing is desperately needed in my electorate, now more than ever. Funding for emergency relief is also needed more than ever, yet this Labor government has reduced funding to CISVic, resulting in a 20 per cent cut in funding to these two services while they face a 50 per cent increase in demand for help.

The peninsula is also in desperate need of affordable worker accommodation. My shire recently told me that the median rent for a home on the peninsula surpassed the median rent for Greater Melbourne last year. For those who work in our hospitals, schools, the local TAFE, aged care, restaurants and hotels, affordable accommodation is almost impossible to find. During the break in sittings, I convened an aged-care and retirement-living roundtable, and the representatives of The Bays in Mornington, Western Port Bay Care Community and Village Glen told me that roughly a third of their workforce now come from beyond our LGA boundaries. At the same time, we have many dependent on benefits. More than 22,000 of my constituents are pensioners. Some are being forced from their low-rent homes because the landlord has to find extra cash to pay the mortgage, the land tax and surging rates. Over the weekend, the evening news reported that around 30 per cent of properties up for auction that weekend in Victoria were investor owned.

Why would investors providing much-needed rental stock be selling out? I can tell you why. It's nine to 10 per cent interest rates. Investor interest only rates today are at 9.39 per cent with CommBank and 9.32 per cent with the NAB. This is smashing landlords and renters alike and has caused immense financial pain on the peninsula. Back in 2016, it cost $330 a week to rent an entry-level house, and the median house price on the peninsula was $380 a week. In the 12 months to December 2022, an entry-level house cost $480 to rent, and the median house rental was $575 a week. Those who have already got into the market to own their own homes are also doing it tough. A third of the dwellings in my electorate are mortgaged. At the last census, 15 per cent of them were already spending more than 30 per cent of their income on their interest repayments. But today the average Australian family mortgage is $750,000. It's now costing them about $1,800 or $1,900 more each month. That's roughly $22,000 extra a year after tax. That's the price of a new Hyundai Venue or Toyota Yaris. They've got to come up with the money for a new car just in interest repayments every year.

Why is this happening? It's happening because Labor can't tame inflation and doesn't have a plan to address it, leaving all the heavy lifting to the RBA. We still have one of the highest core inflation rates amongst advanced economies—higher than France, Germany, Italy, the USA, Japan and Canada. Our economic growth is half the OECD average. We have seen a record collapse in labour productivity, flatlining GDP per capita, the highest collapse in real wages on record and, to top it off, $185 in new spending to keep stoking the inflation fire. What is the result of this mismanagement of the Australian economy? A further degradation in confidence and investment, further constraining the supply in housing.

Building approvals have halved in Mornington, from over 260 in the 2016-17 year to 130 last year. Building approvals are down by a third in Rosebud, Capel Sound and McCrae. In Somerville, one of the fastest growing areas in my electorate, building approvals are down by 40 per cent. Labor has concocted the most bizarre plan to address the housing crisis: a giant Ponzi scheme to create new homes on the never-never. It's so bad that even the Greens hate it, and they're hardly fine friends of good policy. This government is reintroducing its failed housing bill, which would have it borrow $10 billion on the nation's credit card to put in a fund with no certain return, no guaranteed revenue, no brick laid and no door hung.

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