Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

WARE () (): I rise to speak on this matter of public importance—and, indeed, is there any issue in our country at the moment that is not more important than the issue of housing? It is talked about at barbecues. It's spoken about around the water coolers at work. It's spoken about at dinner parties. We speak about it constantly in this place. Most worrying for me is that, for the first time in my life, we have teenagers who are suffering mental health issues and talking about their stress and anxiety about being unable to buy a home.

When I was a teenager back in the 1980s, I recall worrying about a lot of things but never about whether or not I would be able to buy a home.

This government was elected on the campaign promise of cheaper mortgages and cheaper rents, and it has failed abysmally. I have no doubt that the intention is there—the 1.2 million homes they've spruiked, the billions and billions of dollars going into trying to solve this—but it is not being solved. The houses that the former housing minister and now the current housing minister have said will be built haven't been built.

I accept a lot of the things the minister just said then about housing being an absolute social imperative. But the bank of mum and dad is now the sixth biggest lender for homes. That means, for the first time in the history of this nation, whether or not you own a home will largely depend on the circumstances of your birth. That is a travesty, and that is something we must fix. It is something I came into this parliament to fix, as a former planning, environmental and housing lawyer, having worked in both the private sector and the public sector. In my first speech in this place I said I want to fix housing.

We need to fix housing supply. With all respect to those on the other side, the minister talking about having meetings with state ministers—that's been occurring for over a decade, and nothing has changed. It's a talkfest. We need to empower the local government sector. We have now got the slowest and the lowest number of housing approvals in the history of local government, which started in 1919 in the great state of NSW.

What is needed at that level? First of all, the reason DAs are taking so long is that we have a chronic shortage of planners in this country. But, when I hear those on the other side talking about free TAFE and all the other allegedly fabulous things they're doing to address the skills sector, I don't hear anyone over there talking about what they're doing to address the chronic shortage of planners in this country. They are the ones needed to prepare the DAs for developers and then to approve them at local council level. They are also the experts who have to do the up-zonings and the rezonings in all of the local government areas throughout our country to increase housing supply.

I have never heard the Minister for Housing and I haven't heard the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government talking about any of this. That says to me that with all the goodwill and intention in the world on that side—and I have no doubt that they want to fix the housing problem. There is no-one on that side, with respect to them, who even understands the problem at a grassroots level. Until we start looking at that and until we start talking about that—

I hear the member for Hasluck. The member for Hasluck exactly has the same things being said to her in her electorate as they're saying to me in Hughes. They are saying, 'The government's been in for 2½ years and it hasn't fixed our housing issues in Hasluck.' You know it. We know it. The whole country knows it. We must fix this housing crisis for the good— (Time expired)

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