Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Since the 47th Parliament first convened on 26 July 2022 we have had 187 pieces of legislation pass this place, with a further 113 still under consideration. This means that, in 18 months, over 300 pieces of legislation have been considered here at a federal level. On behalf of my community of North Sydney, every piece has been critically reviewed, not just looking at what is said but trying to understand what problem the legislation is trying to solve and how its effectiveness is going to be measured. Frequently I've been asked to support legislation moved before the provision of substantive details. In every case this has made me extremely uncomfortable and I have voiced this discomfort to the minister involved. And so it is that that's where I find myself today: being asked to support the passage of legislation that, in my opinion, raises more questions than it provides answers.

While the headlines generated by the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and the Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023 look good, there are very real questions I believe all of us should be demanding be answered before we pass this legislation. Currently it's difficult to have any sense of whether this legislation will have an impact on housing availability and affordability. Yes, many in the sector have been calling for this type of government intervention at the federal level for some time. And, yes, there are people right across this country who would benefit from additional support to help them get a leg up in the housing market. But, ultimately, while we are told this legislation will address both of these desires, the truth is that the how of it is simply not addressed here. Rather, on the face of it, this legislation presents as something that is simply bureaucratic. It's objective is to empower a government body—that being Housing Australia—to enter shared-equity arrangements on behalf of the Commonwealth in relation to residential property. It goes on to say that this empowerment is required so the agency can improve housing outcomes for Australians by assisting low-income and middle-income individuals to buy homes. But it's silent on how that support will be offered. It is silent on how such a small program, which underwhelmingly only seeks to support 10,000 purchases, will even make a dent in the challenge we currently face or how we will know if it's working.

The North Sydney community consistently raises the issues of housing accessibility and affordability and rental stress with me, with many concerned not only for themselves but for future generations. They are concerned that their children will not be able to live nearby in the communities they've grown up in. They're concerned that, when couples separated, individuals can't afford to stay near their support networks, schools and friends. The lack of details and specificity within this legislation ultimately leaves me questioning what its purpose is. How can I go back to my community and tell them that, yes, this legislation will address those concerns?

Stepping right back, I'd argue that fundamentally the problems of homelessness, housing inequality and housing unaffordability stem from a failure to protect the basic human right to housing. In the international human rights context, the right to housing comes within the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which articulates the right to an adequate standard of living. Australia is a signatory to this important treaty and thus recognises, at least in theory, the right for everyone to have an adequate standard of living, including housing and the continuous improvement of living standards. Yet as a nation we have failed to embed these international treaties into domestic law, and this government continues to pass up an opportunity for a human rights centred housing policy. Instead we find ourselves here, debating patchy, piecemeal approaches that lack an overarching and clear objective and fail to adequately deal with the cause of the problem.

I wonder, then, in this instance: is the positive headline really worth the delay in real reform that results as a consequence of its pursuit? From my own perspective, the electorate I represent, North Sydney, is wonderfully vibrant and diverse, and we want that to continue. But, for this to be possible, people must be able to access affordable housing. We want our teachers, our emergency service workers and our healthcare workers to be able to afford to live within a reasonable distance of their workplaces, not, as is often the case, to have to travel 30 to 50 kilometres to get to work or to pay more than half of their salary for a small apartment in the local area.

What, then, would my community like to see us debating in this place today instead? Well, in October last year we undertook to address the issue of housing affordability through a process of deliberative and participative democracy. After we invited 5,000 randomly selected but demographically representative constituents to participate in a one-day community forum on housing, 30 individuals were selected to form a diverse and representative group. These people then spent an entire day discussing the issue amongst themselves and with a range of housing experts, and they were tasked with coming up with a key idea they wanted me to champion in this place. This is a hugely complex and multifaceted issue. The group ultimately presented me with their desire to see more medium-density diverse and affordable housing around public transport hubs, with federal infrastructure funding made contingent on the zoning requirements. They saw this as a way through what is an issue that has been building for years.

Low interest rates, migration, property investment and other drivers have pushed home prices to record highs, locking a growing number of Australians out of homeownership, particularly younger, poorer Australians and those who have lost their family homes following a separation. Indeed, research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute released last week shows just how broken our housing system is, with the ability to buy a property becoming increasingly out of reach in Australia and the proportion of higher income earners that rent growing. In our case, 40 per cent of the people who live in North Sydney rent, and they rent for longer than they ever have.

This shouldn't be a surprise, as even back in 2021 the census told us that ownership rates were dropping, with 67 per cent of people owning a home in 2021 compared to 70 per cent in 2006. Back in 1971, two-thirds of 30- to 34 -year-olds owned their own home, yet by 2021 that had dropped to 50 per cent. For Australians aged 25 to 29, the difference was similar: 50 per cent of them owned their own home in 1971, while only 36 per cent owned their own home in 2021. Homeownership rates have also gradually decreased among people nearing retirement. Homeownership rates for those between the ages of 50 and 54 fell from 80 per cent to 72 per cent over the 25 years from 1996.

At this point in time, then, I think it's worth noting that there are already a number of government programs that offer support for first-time homebuyers, low-income households, Indigenous Australians and vulnerable people, with the four main types of support being home purchase assistance, the First Home Owner Grant scheme, the First Home Super Saver Scheme and the Home Guarantee Scheme. In fact, in the 2020-21 year about 44,200 instances of home purchase assistance were provided across Australia. Of these, over a quarter of the main applicants receiving assistance were aged 35 to 44. About a fifth of the recipients earned a gross income less than $700 per week. More than half were in major cities, with a quarter in inner-regional areas and one-in-10 in outer-regional areas. Only a very small proportion were in remote or very remote areas. At the same time, lending commitments to owner-occupier first-time homebuyers increased from 81,650 commitments in the 12 months to May 2017 to 138,400 commitments in the 12 months to May 2022.

With so much movement around what is commonly known as the 'great Australian dream'—that being to own your own home—as a parliament, I can't help but think that we need to ask ourselves the really hard question: do we really want to continue to set homeownership as the ultimate goal of our nation, or is it time that, as a parliament, we bravely lead a discussion around what constitutes a home and how people can have the security of one without necessarily needing to own it or bear the burden of massive debt to keep it? Ultimately, a help-to-buy program such as this one is one of several short-term, demand-side initiatives that the government has at its disposal to assist those in the community hoping to make the great Australian dream a reality. It is, in general, a more cost-effective measure than other types of first-home buyer assistances as the government recoups its investment. It contributes less to house price inflation, as the homeowner has less capital to apply to their next home purchase once the government recoups its equity stake.

After many decades of neglect, this sort of short-term relief does not provide what we ultimately need, which is longer-term, real reform. The fact that many of the key components of the Help to Buy scheme are found only in the explanatory memorandum, with the program details to be set in non-disallowable program directions rather than in primary legislation, is particularly concerning for me. Many of the details of this program, including the upper limit of the Commonwealth contribution and the minimum deposit requirements, will be in the program directions, which are proposed to be a legislative instrument not subject to disallowance and exempt from sunsetting. This leaves several questions unanswered, including: why is the program being designed with a four-year tenure rather than making allowance for the possibility of a reinvested revolving fund? What is the economic return to the government? Is the government relying solely on capital gain? Is it also exposed to loss? How is the return recouped if a loan is paid off before the property has sold? Does the cost base change with any future capital investment by the purchaser through property renovation? Is the government's loan subordinated to the participating lenders mortgage? If an owner chooses to purchase a larger stake in their property, how will the value of that share be calculated? What are the assessment criteria measures of success vis a vis other homeownership support initiatives? Perhaps most crucially, what is the process for allocating or awarding program places, given the number of qualifying applicants are certain to far exceed the number of investments made each year?

While I acknowledge it is argued the limited scope of the program mitigates against the potential for it to significantly impact house prices, I am concerned that, with only 10,000 places available yearly and over 700,000 homes currently changing hand each year, the process by which applicants are assessed and selected is currently opaque. Surely it cannot be the case that this government is asking this parliament to greenlight a piece of legislation that would see the government invest over $300 million over four years with no obligation to agree how that money is to be distributed. If this reform is important enough to do, it deserves to be done well. Australians deserve more than a headline. Notably, given its lack of specificity or targeting, the proposed scheme would seem to bring little benefit to the people in my community. It doesn't appear to be targeted towards essential workers needing to live closer to their jobs, nor does it seem to be targeted towards young people who wish to live near their families, where they grew up. It definitely doesn't seem to be geared towards offering support for women over 55, who are rapidly becoming the highest-risk population for homelessness in our community. With median prices of $3.4 million for a house and $1 million for a unit in my electorate in 2022, the proposed state cap on dwelling purchase prices for New South Wales cities of $950,000 will limit participation for those who wish to live in North Sydney to units.

Ultimately, Australia's housing system is desperately in need of long-term reform. Sugar hits, bandaid solutions and glamourous headlines alone won't cut it. The government's National Housing and Homelessness Plan was supposed to lead long-term reform. It was meant to provide coherence to the initiatives delivered since the 2022 election, to coordinate activities across all levels of government and, more importantly, to provide a roadmap for the much wider housing reforms that Australia badly needs. Yet the narrow remit of the National Housing and Homelessness Planissues paper, which was published in August last year, leaves many, including myself, concerned the plan will not achieve its aspirations and ultimately fail to deliver the fundamental change needed to fix the housing crisis.

Specifically, the lack of overarching goals and objectives, the lack of consideration of policy areas relevant to housing, including migration, the settlement policy, income support, financial regulation and tax, and the lack of any clear recognition that the housing system status quo is in need of fundamental change all mean, as we stand here today and are asked to pass this legislation, that we're asked to do so in a bubble of hope rather than the pursuit of tangible change in course. While I can acknowledge there is appetite for a scheme such as this and that this may be a small step towards helping more Australians into homeownership, we need much more ambitious reforms to address the fundamental and enduring housing problems that have been escalating in this country for decades. We need to move beyond headlines and towards true reform.

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