Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's clear we are in the middle of a housing crisis. Rents and house prices are skyrocketing, making an affordable place to call home harder to secure. The sad part about this is that this crisis is not new. It didn't start when the Albanese government was elected last year. It didn't start when Tony Abbott was caught eating an onion. This is a crisis that has been evolving and worsening for quite some time. When I'm chatting to locals in Bennelong I hear again and again that they are concerned about housing affordability. Homeowners want their kids to afford a place to live locally and young people and young families want a stable, affordable roof over their heads—just as the majority of their parents had in their generation. The public desire for action has been there for some time. Unfortunately the need for action right now is becoming more and more urgent.

Before coming here, just like the member for Fowler, I had the pleasure of spending nearly a decade in local government, five as the local mayor. It was through that experience that I became aware of the housing crisis and the inability of the market to fix it. It became quite clear to me quite quickly that government intervention was necessary as the market, in its then form, was incapable of providing affordable rentals and affordable homes to buy for all. So at the time, as mayor, I thought I would try to do something about it. After holding a local housing summit, the council then adopted an affordable housing policy with the aim of trying to get developers to provide affordable rental homes to the council for the purpose of providing homes for low- and middle-income earners. Projections by the council's policy indicated that by 2031 the local government area in Bennelong will require an estimated 10,700 affordable dwellings to meet local needs.

In response to these shocking statistics, the council, with community support, lodged an inclusionary zoning amendment in our local planning laws to help fix the problem. And despite evidence showing housing was unaffordable for families, despite then Premier Berejiklian declaring affordable housing as her priority and despite community support for our proposal, our efforts to help housing were rejected. Farcically, the Liberal state government said the proposal 'was ahead of its time'. What this shameful example taught me is that no one level of government can fix this housing crisis, no one level of government can go it alone. This is a national crisis and one we need a coordinated and targeted response to solve.

I cannot tell you how proud I am to be part of a federal government that has put solutions to our national housing crisis on the table. It was part of the reason why I decided to put my hand up to be a candidate last year. The nation is talking about housing because it is this Labor government that was elected on a mandate to help solve it. It is this Labor government that took policies on housing to last year's election, and it is the Labor housing minister that has been working every day to implement them. And it is this Labor government that is bringing state and local governments to the table to work together on this. After a decade of negligence by the former federal government, we finally have a federal government committed to addressing the housing crisis and taking tangible steps to deliver housing relief for Australians.

On top of our direct investments in building homes and our proposed Housing Australia Future Fund, one of the most important things we've done since coming to government is getting the states, territories and local governments together. Expanding upon the foundations laid by our National Housing Accord, we have introduced substantial initiatives such as the $3 billion New Homes Bonus and the $500 million housing support program. These efforts with state and territory governments are geared towards achieving national targets which entail the construction of 1.2 million new homes in the course of the next five years. We know these measures are important, and they need the support and collaboration of this parliament and all levels of government across the country.

There is no one solution here. We need direct investment, we need cooperation with state and territory governments and we need this parliament to be working hard to deliver outcomes. I'd encourage those in the other place to support the measures that will soon to be in the Senate for the Housing Australia Future Fund, because without that collaboration, without that national response, we'll not be able to ease the housing pressure that is facing Australians today.

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