John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Lack of affordable housing is one of the biggest challenges facing our constituents nationally regardless of the geographic region, nature of urban development or underlying socio-economic circumstances. Household expenditure on housing increased 55 per cent in the six years to 2009-10 concurrent with massive price hikes for many other essentials, including power, water, food, transport and health. Today, an average earner cannot afford an average home anywhere in Australia.

An Australian household must earn 1.8 times average weekly earnings in order to afford a median-priced home. This is directly related to the modern challenges of less time for family, for community, for a healthy and balanced lifestyle, for mental health and for productivity. If you are not an average weekly earner living in partnership with another average weekly earner, where do you live? How do you afford the 68 per cent hike in rent since 2003-04? How do you tell your children that they will have to move house and change schools yet again? How do you come up with the cost of moving, the additional commuter fares or petrol money and extra time it will take to get to work?

What if you are in such a partnership, but one of you is a small business owner who cannot afford to make ends meet with the drop-off in sales that has arisen from the threat of the carbon tax? If you have been able to survive the GFC and dampened consumer sentiment arising from the carbon tax, how will you be able to afford the increased energy, transport and other imposts a carbon tax will bring? Are one of you employed in an industry that will be forced to contract under a carbon tax? Where will you live while you retrain for a promised green job?

There is so little subsidised housing available that crisis housing is now used as a substitute. So where do those in crisis go? They surf couches or live on the streets. What does that do to a child's education, self-esteem and mental health? In many parts of Australia, crisis housing is no longer available unless you are living on the streets. This includes families. This includes single mothers, who hope it will lead to crisis accommodation before their children are taken away.

There has been much debate about the causes of homelessness. It is clearly a very complex issue. There has been much debate about mechanisms to improve housing affordability—tax breaks and incentives for various categories of home buyer. There has been much discussion as to whether tax breaks for residential property investors add to rental housing stock, supporting lower rents, or push up house prices.

At the end of the day, the only thing that will reduce housing costs is a rebalancing of housing supply with demand. Australia's infrastructure deficit must be addressed. We must open up land for development in a manner that provides the essentials of modern living. Affordable housing means new communities—houses whose prices are in synchronicity with nearby employment opportunities. It means an economy that balances incomes with expenses such that our communities can afford to live.

In closing, I would like to pay special tribute to all those who struggle each day to provide the essentials of modern life for their families and to the tireless workers and organisations that endeavour to support them. In my electorate of Bennelong, I think of Eastwood Christian Community Aid, a largely volunteer organisation who, over the past six months, has worked with 243 clients suffering financial stress, 28 per cent of whom are in housing crisis. That is to say that they are spending more than 50 per cent of their income on housing accommodation.

Without affordable housing it is very difficult to pick up the pieces—to maintain one's family structure and stability to support your children's education. These stresses often impact on one's mental health and so make the challenges of picking up the pieces that much greater. While we argue over a carbon tax and grapple with the infrastructure deficits, regional development and affordable housing, we may well spare a thought for those at the front line doing their best to make a difference. Organisations such as Eastwood Christian Community Aid—and there are many like them—fill a tremendous need in our community under ever-tightening funding models that often place their own job certainty in doubt.