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

I have to say I'm absolutely shocked and surprised at the previous speaker's self-congratulatory tone. I spent much of the last decade working in the homelessness and housing sector, and I can tell you that, from the position of the people on the ground and in the sector, you were not doing a fantastic job. We could not find housing, particularly on the social and affordable housing end, and homelessness was going up. You wouldn't speak to us. It was an absolute disaster.

We had Catherine House in Adelaide, which was a 52-bed property, and those beds were constantly full. We had a waiting list of 20 to 30 people at any time, and this was only for women who were unaccompanied—adult women who didn't have children with them. Those were the specific criteria we were talking about. All of the other services—the ones that dealt with women and children, the ones that dealt with men, the ones that dealt with families—had similar situations: queues out the door, phone calls from desperate people all the time, wanting to come in. We had to say to them: 'I'm sorry. We're full. We'll put you on the waitlist. You're rough sleeping, but we will put you on the waitlist and, when a bed comes up, then we can get you in.' We could only get a bed open for a new person to come in when we'd managed to move someone out, when we'd managed to find them a house or a home. Trying to access houses and homes—that was the bed blocker that was keeping people on the streets under those opposite in the last decade, which they seem to think was all absolutely fantastic. That was an absolute eye-opener for me, as somebody who's actually been in the sector and talked to the people experiencing homelessness, heard their stories and heard their desperation.

Housing was always the rate-limiter. We would have somebody come in and we would spend an average of 43 days working with them, resolving the issues that had brought them into homelessness, resolving the issues that had arisen since they had been homeless—health issues, legal issues and, always, financial issues, because, if you've got money, you've got more options. There were all those sorts of things. Then we would have to find them a property. Not all houses are the same and not all houses suit everybody. If you want to reunite with your children, then you obviously need a multibed property. If you have a pet, a dog, then you'll need something with a backyard. Some people are happy to share homes. Others, particularly those exiting domestic violence, do not want to share; they want to be able to shut the door at night and know that they have complete control over who is in their environment. So we needed a whole range of properties, a whole range of housing, suitable for different people's situations.

This government's focus has been on providing all of those different types of housing, across Australia—for key workers, for veterans, for women and children escaping domestic violence, social housing, affordable housing, different types of housing. This is very welcome. We have had a shortage of housing. It hasn't just arisen in the last two years, as those opposite seem to think. It has actually been—let's be honest—decades coming. There are a whole range of reasons why that has happened, including Airbnbs taking properties out of the market and into the hotel/motel market. We have a lower density of people living per house at the moment. Post COVID, a lot of people prefer not to share. They're working from home and they need an extra bedroom. So now about 140,000 extra properties need to be found, purely because of that lower density of people per house.

So this government is working on a whole range of strategies. Our big block, of course, is trying to get these strategies through the Senate. We have a range of different strategies, because it is not going to be a one-size-fits-all in terms of getting these properties built. But every single piece of legislation that we have taken to the Senate has been delayed by those opposite and the Greens political party, both of whom say that housing is a priority for them—and yet they delay and delay. Next time they're out in their electorate, when they're actually talking to young people or families who can't find a house, I'd like them to explain how long they have delayed. We know it takes a while to build a house, but the faster you get building, the faster the house will be completed.

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