Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Finance, Competition Policy and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation. I refer the minister to the comments made by his adviser Dr Nicholas Gruen that ‘those who have taken out mortgages in the past four or five years would be the hardest hit by the efforts by both the Reserve Bank and the government to control inflation’. Does the minister for finance agree with his adviser’s comments and does he really understand the impact of the government’s decisions on struggling families with mortgages?

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dr Nicholas Gruen is not my adviser, as was stated in the question from the member for Dickson. That is yet another thing that is wrong in a question from the opposition. We had it from the member for Wentworth all last week—factually incorrect statements in questions. Dr Gruen is not my adviser. I have indicated in a speech that I will be seeking to get assistance from him on the matter of deregulation—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He’s a consultant, not an adviser.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Exactly. And your point is?

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The question has been asked.

Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hope you can do better than this in the last five or six questions in question time, folks. Dr Gruen is not my adviser. As a person who is a respected columnist in a number of journals, he is entitled to express views on other matters as he sees fit, as indeed any other consultant who works for government, be they from KPMG or Deloitte or whoever, is entitled to express views or to work for clients as they see fit.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister inform the House of recent trends in housing affordability? What is the government doing to address the challenge of homelessness?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. We have just come from about an hour and a half debate in the federal parliamentary Labor Party on what various members of the party have found in their local communities on the homelessness front. They have been out visiting shelters for the homeless. Also, what is now an emerging development is the fact that homeless shelters are having to cope with people who are falling out of the housing market because they cannot afford to pay their mortgages. This was a most serious debate and discussion that we had. Those who have traditionally provided shelter services are now having to deal with a whole group of families who, for the first time, are having to rely upon various charities across the country to provide them with transitional accommodation and in some cases crisis accommodation because affordability has become such a real problem.

Some of the statistics referred to in the report by AMP and NATSEM released today are worth recording for the House. I note that these were not referred to in the earlier question to me. The report describes the 1995-96 to 2005-06 period as a decade of dwindling hope. What are the actual figures when it comes to housing affordability? This is a figure which I think should sear itself into people’s attention. In 1995-96, according to this report, purchasing a typical home cost less than five times annual income. In 2005-06 that ratio had blown out to 7½ times annual income. Therein lies the core definition of the housing affordability problem. Whatever increases occurred in the disposable income of households in that period of time have not kept pace with the extraordinary explosion in overall housing costs. That is the absolute core of the housing affordability problem.

In response to an earlier question I ran through our responses on housing affordability generally: firstly, a half billion dollar program, the first home saver account; and, secondly, a half billion dollar program to provide affordable rental accommodation which is designed to bring into stock 100,000 additional units of affordable rental accommodation for the nation over time. Thirdly, we want to deal with the real challenge which local authorities and state governments have brought to our attention nationwide, and to that of the development industry, which is: how do you bring down the level of infrastructure charging on new housing developments? That is why we have also put forward our proposal for a half billion dollar fund to deal with housing affordability, with the object of bringing down local infrastructure charging, with the participation of local authorities, by as much as 20 per cent.

This is one part of the problem. The other is when it flips over into actual homelessness. Here the data becomes so compelling. In the presentations I received from so many of my backbenchers today—and 38 of them spoke in the debate in the parliamentary party—they reported that in the various centres that they visited right across the nation, from electorates spanning Fremantle to Launceston, the constant reply was that there is such a huge and growing turn-away rate for homeless shelters across the country. There are turn-away rates of 40 per cent, 50 per cent or 100 per cent, depending on where you are. This means that we have a problem in the physical availability of crisis accommodation stock in the country. This is a big problem.

The attendant problem is that, with people who are using homeless shelters, the recurrence of the problem—that is, people who use a homeless shelter but, through the inadequate provision of associated health facilities, dental facilities, mental health facilities, become return visitors to homeless shelters—is huge. This problem has not received sufficient ventilation in the national debate. It must do so. It is a crying shame for Australia that, according to the census data, we have 100,000 people classified as homeless. It is a crying shame for Australia that, according to the data, we have some 10,000 people who are sleeping rough each night. The reports from individual caucus members about individual stories of distress, discomfort and plain financial disaster are disturbing deeply. That is why the first white paper commissioned by this government is on homelessness. We as a nation have to get this right not just in boosting the physical supply of stock for homeless across the country but also by dealing with it in a way where we actually bring down the number of people who use these services on a repeat basis. It is a core hallmark of whether we are a decent society or not. It therefore commands our attention. These days it doubly commands our attention because of the data contained in the report released today by NATSEM and the AMP, which points to this ballooning housing affordability problem for working families everywhere, placing all of them at risk of one day having to contemplate the possibility of needing emergency accommodation themselves. That is why this government is determined to act in this area. It is of fundamental relevance to all working families.