Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do find the hypocrisy of what's proposed for matters of public importance to be fascinating. Yesterday, the party that can't cost its own energy thought bubble proposed an MPI on energy costs. And today, the party that has deliberately delayed and frustrated not only significant policies around housing in this place but also at the local level in their own electorates—where they have actively campaigned against social housing developments—now want to talk about housing shortages. When we talk about housing prices and rental costs, we're talking about housing supply—the very thing they have done their level best to hold back. Shame on them!

Basic economics tell us that price and supply are correlated: prices rise when any good or product is in short supply. Meanwhile, the Greens political party—in an unholy alliance with the Liberal-Nationals—have spent their time blocking the very measures that will address supply and which would build large-scale developments of social and affordable housing across the country. They've been lobbying actively, getting up petitions and fighting against actual social and affordable housing developments in their own electorates. So while their social media has them fighting the good fight on housing affordability by yelling at the federal government, the reality is they're doing their very best to block any progress on this measure. They don't what Australians to have homes, they don't want to fix housing supply—what would they campaign on then?

How did we get to where we are? Leaving aside the last decade's absolute lack of focus on housing policy or projects under those opposite, there were a number of recent changes that affected housing supply. We have fewer people per dwelling than previously, driving demand for properties by an additional 140,000 homes. Fewer people per dwelling? How did that happen? Firstly, COVID and changes in post-COVID work practices have also changed the number of people per household, with an increased demand for additional bedrooms to turn into home based offices. Share homes, typically, have fewer people per house to allow for office space to work from home and, generally, there are fewer share homes. People are turning their spare bedrooms into an offices instead of taking in a boarder.

Secondly, a higher divorce rate has meant increasing demand for family homes. Instead of mum, dad and the kids in one home, we now have mum and the kids in one home and dad and the kids in another home—two family homes for a family that used to be in one. I'm not arguing against divorce, I'm simply saying that societal changes are at play here. Then we have barriers to downsizing. Older people wanting to downsize face financial barriers cutting into their buying power, meaning they often stay in larger homes long after the kids have left.

Where else has housing supply gone? Short-term rentals such as Airbnb have taken housing stock out of the rental and residential market and instead placed it in the hotel-motel market. Some local governments and overseas jurisdictions have looked at efforts to curb this, treating Airbnb properties as the businesses they now are, instead of residential properties.

Unlike the Greens, who are campaigning against social housing in our local communities, the Labor government has been getting on with the job of addressing the housing shortage. Last week I was with Minister Collins along with South Australian minister Nick Champion at the launch of yet another social housing development by a community housing provider. This one will build 350 new social and affordable homes at Tonsley under the $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator, which will build 4,000 new social rental homes across the country. The week before I was with Minister Matt Keogh at the launch of the first round of funding for veterans' housing under the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund—another housing strategy the Greens delayed while they used it to harvest your contact details via petitions. Since the election, this government has progressed a whole raft of housing bills, policies, funds and projects, despite the best efforts of the Greens political party in their alliance with the Liberals and the Nationals to stop Australians getting into homes.

I'm going to finish on a case in point: our shared-equity scheme. It's yet another policy being opposed by the Greens and Liberals coalition, despite it actually being on the Greens policy manifesto at their last election. That's how desperate they are to stop Labor doing anything about housing so they can continue to campaign about it. They're desperate to stop Australians being able to get into their own homes so they can campaign. If the Greens political party wants to do something meaningful to help Australians on housing, then just get out of the way.

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