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

I've often talked about my experience running homelessness services and as the co-chair of the internationally renowned Adelaide Zero Project. I've seen homelessness and housing policy across the world, and I've sat and listened to the experiences of people experiencing homelessness and housing stress. Unfortunately, I also saw firsthand the impact of the South Australian state Liberal government, which cost shifted administrative burden out of the department and into the homelessness sector, resulting in a system that is more expensive and has worse outcomes for clients. It turns out that shuffling costs around the system doesn't work.

Here we have the federal Liberal and Nationals parties in opposition, which did nothing positive for housing in the past decade, trying to pretend the housing crisis has miraculously occurred in the last two years. This housing shortage—and it is a shortage in all parts of the sector, including crisis accommodation, social housing, affordable rent, affordable to buy, family homes and retirement living—has been about 40 years coming.

We often talk about Finland as the shining example for housing and homelessness policy. When the rest of the world, Australia included, stopped building social housing and instead started selling it off, Finland kept building. That's why they are in such a good position and other Western countries are facing a homelessness and housing crisis.

We have a housing shortage, and the solution to the housing shortage is to build more housing, so that's what we're doing. The best time to build more housing was any time in the last decade. It didn't happen, so the next best time is now, and that's what we're doing, with $32 billion worth of housing and housing infrastructure. After inheriting record-low rates of building approvals and new builds at a near-decade low from those opposite, under Labor nearly 400,000 homes have already been built across Australia, and there are more in the pipeline thanks to the HAFF, the Social Housing Accelerator program, Safe Places, the expanded Home Guarantee Scheme and more.

They can't be built fast enough, at least in part because of another area neglected by those opposite. We need skilled labour, tradies, to build the homes—brickies, sparkies, chippies, plumbers, tilers, roofers—and we can't get enough of them fast enough. Those opposite and their state counterparts undermined and neglected TAFEs. They cut $3 billion from TAFE, and now they oppose our fee-free TAFE policies that are attracting more people to train to fill the skilled labour shortages. Forty-five thousand Australians have already taken up construction courses in fee-free TAFE.

But that's not the only thing they've tried to oppose to stop us addressing the housing shortage. A coalition of the Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens political party held up the Housing Australia Future Fund. My colleagues in the community housing sector said that they specifically told the Greens that the sector does not back their position of delaying housing measures. They told them that any benefits they gain are more than swallowed up by the impact of the delay. That delay is time in which they could have started building, but instead we're sitting watching cynical political operatives play games with people's lives for campaign opportunities. Now they're doing the same with the shared-equity legislation stuck in the Senate.

While Australians are waiting to get their hands on secure housing thanks to a shared-equity mortgage, they are held captive by cynical political games being played by those opposite and their Greens coalition partners. The fact that shared equity was a Greens policy platform at the last election doesn't seem to hold them back from their hypocritical strategy of delaying, wherever they can, meaningful strategies to assist Australians in housing stress. All the while they're telling Australians they care about the housing crisis and its impact on young Australians, while also campaigning against developments in their own electorates and providing advice to others on how to block developments.

Given the topic of today's MPI proposed by those opposite, that cynicism clearly shows no bounds. As someone who has worked up close with people experiencing homelessness, as a mother of three adult sons trying to get into the housing market and as somebody who has worked closely with the community housing sector that is trying its hardest to build, build, build, this MPI leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and a few sour words: hypocritical, cynical, political opportunists. They're not working for Australia, not working for Australians and only working for themselves and their political gain. Do better.

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