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

The truth is that Australia has not had enough homes to meet the needs of its people for a very long time. This is not a problem that has emerged overnight or post pandemic; it's a crisis decades in the making. We are here not because of migration, as the Liberals want you to believe, but because of poor governments, poor planning, underinvestment and an indifference to housing in general from all levels of government a long time. Because of it, rents are up, and they continue to rise. Buying a home is hard and becoming harder, and it's hurting people and our economy.

On housing, I really fear for our state of New South Wales and our nation. I fear for our young, who have grown up with parents who could afford a home on a modest wage but who themselves cannot, despite often earning higher wages. The inequity of this reality is becoming increasingly unpalatable. In New South Wales, half of our young people are leaving the state. People cannot afford to live in Sydney or the regions, and they're going elsewhere. The premier state cannot continue to be great without our best and brightest in it.

In my electorate of Bennelong, I want to do everything I can to make young people welcome by making housing more affordable. I want Bennelong to be a vibrant hub for young people to study at our two local TAFEs and at Macquarie University. Then I want graduates to work in health and tech at the Macquarie Park Innovation District or establish a business in one of our vibrant town centres. And I want them to do all that whilst living locally, in student, affordable, social, build-to-rent and market housing that is accessible. To do this in Bennelong and across the country, every level of government needs to align.

In my 10 years on the council of the City of Ryde 19,000 new dwellings were approved, 13,000 of those in the five years that I was mayor. I copped a lot of flack for that, and I danced a fine line between heritage, low density and more affordable high density. But, at the end of the day, I took the approach that building more housing was the right thing to do for young people. Even with that record, we were held back by a state government that didn't allow for more affordable housing, and we had a federal government that simply did not care.

That's what makes me proud to be part of this government: we care. We care about delivering more homes. We're not just yelling from the sidelines, as you just heard from the Greens, or blocking progress, as the Liberals do; we're getting involved in the delivery of more housing across the country. Our $32 billion Homes for Australia package is historic. Despite the political and economic headwinds we face, it is delivering. By directly investing in the construction of new homes and in growing our workforce, we will deliver more homes, which will help with affordability. Our $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund will support the construction of 30,000 new social and affordable rental homes over the next five years. Importantly, in the short term, it will turn market housing into non-market housing and will get more approved dwellings off paper and out of the ground. However, we also recognise that, while we work towards these long-term goals, there are immediate needs that must be addressed. That's why we've raised Commonwealth rent assistance not once but twice. That's why we're working with state governments to invest directly into public housing, reform renters' rights and land significant planning reform.

There is so much more to be done. This problem is so acute that we are in a national crisis. Usually, in a crisis, this parliament works together. But, on housing, we're not seeing that. What voters must know is that we have bad-faith actors in this parliament who are putting short-term politics over building more homes. Two significant measures are being held up by an unholy alliance between the Greens and the Liberals. Together, they're stopping Australians getting government help to buy their first home, and they're stopping 160,000 rental homes being built by blocking tax reforms to incentivise their construction. I say to the Greens and to the Liberals that you cannot fix a housing crisis without building more homes. This has been decades in the making, and it cannot be fixed overnight. We went to the election promising to help with the housing crisis, and in two years we made so much progress, but I fully acknowledge there's much, much more to do.

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