Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

For far too many Australians, especially younger Australians, the prospect of homeownership feels far away, and being a renter has never felt more insecure. I know that, if I'm driving around the suburbs any weekend in Melbourne, even in my electorate of Cooper, I'll see lines of young people queueing up to inspect a rental property. Much of the housing isn't adequate, either. Housing is mould infested, riddled with mice and doesn't have proper amenities like water and insulation. The rental market is so bad that you'll see tenants put up with those things. Looking at the faces of those queueing, it's apparent that the demographics of renters has changed. It's not just uni students; it's young professionals, middle-income earners and young families. Unless you've got the bank of mum and dad, you might be renting for your whole life.

Right now we've got a whole generation of Australians who are stuck in rent traps. They feel anger and despair that homeownership may never happen for them. Secure housing isn't just important for comfort and financial security. It's also important for your health. Poor housing is associated with a wide range of health conditions, including respiratory diseases like asthma, cardiovascular diseases, injuries and infectious disease, including TB, influenza and diarrhoea. It's also associated with poor mental health, which can cause physical stress to your body, especially to your nervous, cardiovascular, digestive, immune and respiratory systems.

The member who preceded me in this debate spoke very passionately about this, but the reality is the member and, indeed, those opposite ignore some pretty big facts. We know that a housing crisis doesn't just happen overnight. It creeps in like a home left to the elements. At first the cracks seem small: a loose tile here and there, a splintered floorboard and a creaky door. Then the roof begins to sag, the windows cloud with dust, and the rain seeps through, warping the very foundations of the house. Clothes are left to mould; forgotten photos lie shattered on the floor. The people who once occupied these houses are forgotten, and just as a house that is left to the elements fall apart from years of inaction, so, too, does a country's housing market that is left to rot by policies that fail to keep up with demand and that fail to support those who need it.

The coalition wax lyrical about their record. What a joke! For almost a decade, the coalition saw housing as an afterthought or really not their responsibility but rather that of the free market. They didn't have a housing minister for most of their time in office, and, even when they did, they didn't use their power to drive any sort of reform, failing to even hold a meeting of state and territory housing ministers in their last five years. To make things worse, the last coalition government left Labor with twin crises: building approvals at an almost-decade low and a skills deficit throughout the entire construction industry. They couldn't be bothered to build homes for the most vulnerable across our community, with social housing increasing by less than 10,000 homes over nine years, compared to 30,000 social homes over five years under the last Labor government.

Fundamentally, the coalition didn't think the Commonwealth government should invest in housing. 'Just let the market rip.' Impressively, this manufactured a new class divide, one between those who were able to get into the market early and those with some generational wealth, and everyone else, be it the poor, the middle-class, young professionals and young families or those fleeing domestic violence and women who have to restart after divorce. They, on that side of the House, voted against every one of our housing policies. The faux rage coming from that side is reprehensible. They don't care. They believe, if you can't afford to buy a house, it's your fault and it's not their problem to fix.

But after a house is neglected and left out in the elements to decay for the years, rendering itself uninhabitable, it can actually be returned to its former glory. It can again become a safe environment for those who need it—a please to live, a place to share with family, a place with security: a home. Just as a house can be saved, so, too, can a crisis be solved, but it takes more than a quick coat of paint. It means reinforcing the foundations with real investment in affordable and social housing, patching up broken policies that left people out in the cold and rebuilding trust that a home is more than a just an asset for wealthy investors. Piece by piece, brick by brick, a house can be made whole again, and, unlike those opposite who sat there doing nothing and let this crisis unfold, Labor is doing the long, hard work to rebuild. We're looking both short and long term and for every type of person, renter and homebuyer. We want to revive the Australian dream—the Australian dream that those opposite left to rot.

So what is Labor doing? Led by our fabulous Minister for Housing, Clare O'Neil, we're delivering smaller deposits with our five per cent deposit program and smaller mortgages under our Help to Buy shared equity scheme, which, I want to point out again, those on that side voted against. We're working with states and territories to take stress out of renting with longer five-year leases, stronger tenant protections and the power to make your place your own with pets and your own pictures on the walls. We've halved the inflation rate with two budget surpluses to help bring interest rates down and take pressure off mortgage holders. But we know the long-term fix to housing is to build more homes in our cities, our suburbs and our regions. That's why we've started our big housing build—the largest in 70 years—with our $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund. We're building social housing, including for victims of domestic violence. We're training more tradies, building more infrastructure and directly investing in homes ourselves, as governments should do in a crisis. We're making sure there are affordable rentals for frontline workers and making repairs for maintenance and improvements to remote Indigenous housing. We're making sure that there is crisis and transitional housing for families fleeing domestic violence and housing for specialist services for our veterans at risk of homelessness.

I know that not everyone can feel it yet, but these changes are big. I think they paint a very stark picture between the coalition and us in this election, and Australians know it. They know that we do not want to go backwards to where only those with rich parents can afford to avoid living in a mould-infested apartment. We want prosperity and housing for all. We want the best things that come with having a house over your head and somewhere to call home, such as security and all those things that a house can provide. One of the best things this government is doing to make sure that Australians can get into a house and call it their own for their families is to see wages in this country go up for every single worker. It's because of our policies and because we have a fabulous Treasurer that we are seeing inflation going down. And, incredibly importantly, we are seeing unemployment dropping. Unemployment is low. If you think of these three things together—people getting jobs, people with decent wages and inflation going down—it's a recipe to ensure that people in this country can absolutely afford to buy a home and live in peace and security.

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