Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I start, I would like to acknowledge and thank the member for Newcastle for putting up this motion. It is a very important issue that we do need to discuss and we do need to dwell upon. It is incredibly complex, and there is no silver bullet, but we do need to be having a national conversation about this. Most importantly, we need to have a minister who is actually initiating that conversation.

I remember the day I was elected as the member for Canberra in 2010—it feels like 1910! It was a tremendously exciting day, and I was eager to throw myself into everything. My mind was racing with the potential and the possibilities, and there was so much to do. I needed staff; I needed to prepare my first speech and I needed to call the volunteers who got me over the line. I got the keys to the office and I went to work transforming the office from a storage space that had been used for so much to a meeting space. It was where I was, standing alone amongst the cardboard boxes, having just got the keys to the place, when the office phone rang and I picked it up. A woman was on the other end. She told me her name and that she was a constituent and she did not know what to do. She had fled a relationship that had turned violent, but with teenage kids—one of them a boy—she was having a hard time finding women's refuges able to take them in because, at that stage in Canberra, women's refuges did not take boys. She was running out of options. She had been sleeping in her car with her kids, who were going to school. They were sleeping in the car at night and going to school the next day. She told me it was getting harder and harder to manage and she did not know if I could help. She told me she was trying everything she could do. She said it was draining, because not only was she homeless and sleeping rough in the car, having survived an abusive relationship; she was also sick. She was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.

That was the very first call I received in my electorate office as a new MP and it completely floored me. That call took me by the nose and pressed it firmly to the grindstone. Everything else fell away, because I had a job to do, and right then she needed me to do it. Around 2,000 Canberrans slept rough last night. The ACT has the highest rate of homelessness in the country after the Northern Territory—and you can imagine what it is like in a Canberra winter. I have received many calls just like that first one. The reason may differ every time, although quite often, when it comes to women, it has a lot to do with domestic violence. But the need remains consistent: it is the need for a roof over one's head. Australia should be able to provide that. It is a basic human right that we as a nation are failing to provide. When we fail, we fail women most of all.

Homelessness comes in waves, and the research on the next wave is clear. The next wave will be disproportionately made up of older women. A recent report by the Equality Rights Alliance called for urgent action to reinforce the safety nets, if we are to prevent poverty and homelessness for the current cohort of single older women. ACT Shelter estimates there are more than 11,000 women and 7,000 men over the age of 45 at risk of homelessness. What we do here in this building makes a profound difference to what happens to those men and women. We can either smother the wave or sit and wait for the tsunami.

From time to time, I recall that first call because it reminds me what government is capable of doing and what we as MPs, as senators, are capable of doing. We should never forget the power of government to transform people's lives. In government, Labor invested almost $5 billion in new funding for support services and programs to assist people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. We invested $5.6 billion in social housing—the single-largest investment in social housing in Australia's history. Today, this massive investment is providing 31,000 affordable homes to those who need them most, particularly here in Canberra.

The mother whose call I took now has a home. She works just around the corner from my electorate office in Canberra. Her cancer is in remission, her kids are excelling and they are now at university. She is a reminder that safe and affordable housing changes lives, but only if it is available. Addressing our housing issues will require focus and consistent leadership. It is why the motion calls for the appointment of a dedicated minister for housing and homelessness. It is why the motion calls for the development and implementation of a national housing strategy. People are depending on the government to really start doing its job. Things will not get better by being ignored.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an issue that is relevant to many of us in many of our electorates. I thank the member opposite for bringing the matter to the chamber's attention. I know the member for Canberra in her contribution has touched on matters affecting local constituents. I have certainly had similar discussions in my electorate of Forde. But, as usual, Labor like to tell a story that does not necessarily bear out the reality or the facts. If we look at the history of this, whilst Labor put an enormous amount of money into the National Rental Affordability Scheme, as usual with most Labor programs, the ANAO report identified that it was slow in delivery and failed to meet its delivery targets despite ongoing government funding.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So you've cut it altogether, then.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let the member opposite get a bit of a history lesson on what the government is actually doing. The member opposite talks about funding. It was a Labor government that actually failed to fund homelessness funding after the end of the previous financial year. There was not a single dollar of funding provided after 30 June 2014 by the previous Labor government for national partnership housing funding.

Let us get a few facts on the table. This financial year the coalition government will directly contribute $6.4 billion to improve housing outcomes. That includes some $1.3 billion to the states and territories through the National Affordable Housing Agreement for housing assistance and homelessness, $4.38 billion in Commonwealth rent assistance to support more than 1.3 million individuals and families renting in the private and community housing market, $257 million in financial incentives through a national rental affordability scheme for the construction and rental of dwellings for low- and moderate-income households and some $428 million to assist Indigenous housing outcomes through the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing. The coalition government understands that we need a long-term systematic effort to address homelessness and housing affordability. In fact, I was discussing the matter with the Treasurer earlier today

The government has restored funding for the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, providing some $230 million over two years from 1 July 2015, which will be matched by the states to fund frontline homelessness services which were left unfunded by those opposite. Under the 2015 to 2017 National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, priority has been given to services focusing on women and children experiencing domestic violence and on homeless youth. We know that among the most common factors leading to homelessness, particularly for women and children are issues to do with domestic violence. The member for Canberra touched on that in her contribution and the Salvation Army has spoken about it in its reports. There are almost 450 homelessness service providers delivering some 775 homelessness services around Australia.

The coalition has also finalised a number of initiatives to encourage new and innovative solutions to provide housing for people with disability. In 2015, the coalition finalised a specialist disability accommodation pricing framework. We are also allocating $10 million towards that initiative, to encourage the completion of housing projects for people with disability outside of NDIS trial sites. In February this year, the coalition established the Affordable Housing Working Group to investigate ways to boost the supply of affordable rental housing through innovative finance models. The working group received some 77 submissions, which are currently being evaluated, with the final report to include recommendations for possible trials and the next steps. The working group will canvass a range of innovative ways to increase investment in affordable housing. In addition, the government committed in the 2016-17 budget to implement a compulsory rent deduction scheme for social housing recipients. (Time expired)

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak wholeheartedly in favour of the motion on safe and affordable housing that is before the House today. I commend my friend the member for Newcastle as someone who has a long and abiding interest in those suffering homelessness and who is also a progressive, speaking out for those who need it the most. We on this side of the chamber are not afraid to speak on behalf of our record, because we on this side of the chamber have a proud record. Labor has a proud record of not only talking the talk but delivering when it comes to housing affordability and homelessness. We know that this nation is in the grip of a national housing crisis. On any given night, 105,000 Australians, including around 705 in my electorate of Oxley, are without a home.

We hear a lot of platitudes from those opposite, and we just heard from the member for Forde. I give it to the member for Forde: when, in August 2014, we had that disgraceful attack from the former Treasurer Joe Hockey, who said that people on low incomes either do not drive cars or do not drive very far—that was the beginning of the 'lifters and leaners' attacks on poor and working people—the member for Forde was appalled by those comments, just as most Australians would have been. We have a Treasurer of the nation who thinks that, to get into the housing market, you need rich parents. We have a government with the wrong priorities when it comes to delivering housing affordability and homeless services in this nation. What we heard from the contribution by the member opposite was that we do not have a minister for housing and homelessness. The government shut down the National Rental Affordability Scheme. They abolished the National Housing Supply Council. They abolished the Prime Minister's Council on Homelessness. They cut funding to Homelessness Australia, cut funding to National Shelter, cut funding to the Community Housing Federation of Australia and cut $88 million from the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness. Ministers from around the nation met on Friday, and yet no commitment was given to increasing funding and no commitment was given to the funding arrangements needed to deliver outcomes for those most vulnerable in our community. There was also a cut of $26.8 million from the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing. Those opposite have suspended the housing affordability inquiry. They have failed to commit to provide funding to the NPAH beyond June 2017, placing at risk crisis accommodation, assistance with long-term housing needs and early intervention programs.

When you look at Labor's record, you see that we make housing a priority. We set the target to halve homelessness by 2025. We know that reforming the tax treatment of rental properties to inject fairness into the property market—limiting negative gearing to new property—will provide incentives for new constructions and add thousands of jobs to the construction industry. On this side of the House we have a genuine commitment to dealing with the long-term housing issues in this nation. In my home state, the Palaszczuk Labor government was forced to deal with some of the cruellest cuts that we saw from the previous Newman government—that toxic experiment that failed the people of Queensland. In my electorate, in working-class suburbs like Inala, we saw some of the cruellest cuts that I have seen in my 25 years in politics, from the LNP government. In the term of the last government, we saw cuts to 23 organisations that provide tenancy advice and advocacy services to 100,000 Queenslanders. Thank goodness those days are behind us in Queensland. The Palaszczuk Labor government is now reversing those trends and making sure that we are seeing $152.6 million invested in specialist homelessness services. I am proud to see a $100 million investment in new government-led housing construction, something that was abolished and cut by the previous Newman government. We on this side of the House know that only a federal Labor government, working hand in glove with state Labor governments, will provide long-term housing for those who need it. We have seen it time and time again. I remind this chamber that over 105,000 Australians will be without a home tonight. My hope is that this government will start investing in real housing solutions for those who need it the most.

David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for bringing this motion to the parliament. As we all know, homelessness is a serious issue and one that, quite frankly, should not be politicised in any way, shape or form. Homelessness is not only about supply; it is also about issues around mental illness and drug dependency. Homelessness should not be conflated with housing affordability. They are two separate issues. I am proud of our government, which has actually tackled mental illness. We have only recently invested another $192 million into mental health programs right across this country, to ensure that we tackle this scourge that has embraced many parts of our country, along with drug addiction, particularly the scourge of ice. We have invested $300 million to tackle ice and the scourge that it brings not only to metropolitan areas but also to electorates like Maranoa, where we have small communities that have been decimated by ice. In my own electorate, our coalition government has put nearly $9 million into the Primary Health Network that will ensure that those programs are run at a local level to make a real impact on people who have that addiction.

Let's not just look at the mental health than the drug addiction issues. Let's look at the affordability issues and responsibility. Affordability is squarely and wholly a state and local government responsibility. They are the ones that can unlock the tenure of parts of the country to allow more supply to reduce the costs of developers going out and developing more land in order to reduce the cost of land in our metropolitan areas, and they can reduce the red tape and reduce the stamp duty. Our big metropolitan areas like Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne have high-density building infrastructure.

The big issue comes back to our good friends over the road here, the CFMEU. The costs are inhibitive because the CFMEU adds costs to the construction of any high-density building. The reality is it is the CFMEU that adds this value. It is the CFMEU, but, lo and behold, the Labor Party is there continually taking the money. The CFMEU are always out there adding to the costs and that is the problem we have in cities.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

A government member: You should be ashamed.

David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not ashamed. In metropolitan areas where there is a big demand for housing, the problem is the CFMEU is driving up the costs so that people cannot afford to buy houses. That is the blindness of the ALP. They are unable to understand the reality of economics—101 of economics. In my electorate of Maranoa, we are fortunate not have the scourge of the CFMEU impacting the price of construction. I am fortunate that our government is investing in the key economic levers that are actually creating jobs and growth.

Telecommunication connectivity creates wealth in my electorate with the NBN to 68,000 households and premises. It actually creates jobs and allows us to take advantage of the free trade agreements that our government has created with China, South Korea and Japan. We are putting real wealth and jobs in communities like Roma and Dalby and Chinchilla because we are putting money in people's pockets and that allows them to create jobs.

We actually have an oversupply of housing in my electorate. We in the government are creating wealth and creating jobs that allow people to decentralise away from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane .Those people on the other side would not know what it would be like to be west of the great divide. They would not know where the Great Dividing Range is, to be honest, so they would not know what happens out there because their emphasis is on what happens in metropolitan areas where they can help their mates in the CFMEU. Their mates in the CFMEU continue to make more money and continue to support the Labor Party.

It is about connectivity and about creating opportunities for people to decentralise out of metropolitan areas to create jobs and to create real growth. That is what happens. It is not just about creating more big government; it is about creating opportunity and that is where Labor fails to understand. Those opposite create big government, create big infrastructure around government that over holds people and they actually ensure that they create nothing other than big government. The reality is we need as a government to pull the economic levers to create jobs and growth and that is what this government is doing. I am proud to be part of this government.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the motion moved by the member for Newcastle even though I think it is exceptionally mean of the member to advance the proposition that this government have a minister for housing and homelessness. Clearly that would involve someone in the Turnbull government taking a lead on housing policy and presumably responsibility for it—something that has been anathema to them so far. Does the honourable member for Newcastle not realise that, in the words of Yes Minister, this is an area in which the government would rather hope to have a policy of not having a policy. Instead, I understand, they prefer to cast themselves as independent commentators making sage remarks at industry conferences on the problems of the housing market, the causes of the budget deficit and the distorting effects of capital gains tax and negative gearing—as if it was all so very, very sad but really nothing to do with them.

Having a minister would have the entirely undesirable effect, from the standpoint of this government, of making someone accountable for what was going on. Who knows—that might even lead to the whole government finding itself collectively held to account. As recorded by Peter van Onselen and Wayne Errington in The Turnbull Gamblean excellent read—the last time the Prime Minister and the Treasurer had some modest thoughts about tackling the excesses of negative gearing and capital gains tax, they took them to cabinet and got told by the 'internal government in exile' to get a grip and stop messing about so they can keep their hands clean for attacking Labor's ideas.

I am reminded also that the member for Bennelong—by all accounts, a decent, hardworking and intelligent young man—had spoken previously in this debate, suggesting that he would like to see incremental change and not anything radical. This government, of course, to date, has not even been up to that. In fact, even the idea of incremental change has seemed so radical to this government that it eased the honourable member from the chair of the economics committee's housing inquiry in 2015 when it became all too apparent that he had the unnerving habit of telling the truth about housing affordability. Of course, now economic commentators and many of us here are wondering just why the Alexander inquiry on housing has not been reactivated to complete its work in the 45th Parliament. In any event, he may well have left it too late for the sort of exclusively incremental approach that the member for Bennelong and the temperate types on all sides would prefer.

Tinkering with a few state planning laws, like the members opposite want, will not be enough. Assuming we all live long enough to see that happen, the $11 billion hole punched in the Commonwealth budget by the combined effects of negative gearing, capital gains tax and other depreciation concessions does not allow the luxury of these short-term solutions. Nor should we continue to tolerate a housing market which excludes about half of those under 45 from homeownership, leaves one in 200 Australians homeless and parks 200,000 households on the waiting list for social housing.

The percentage of Australians owning or on the way to owning their own dwelling is continuing to slip—now down to 67 per cent of all Australians, compared to 75 per cent a few years ago. The proportion of Australians aged 34 and below who own a home is down by a quarter in the last decade and there are similar statistics for those 35 to 44. Older women have now become the fastest growing group of homeless people in Australia. Mortgage arrears are at record level, despite record-low interest rates.

We now, too, have the perverse situation, in parts of Australia, where tens of thousands of people are homeless or on waiting lists, while the tax laws encourage overinvestment in lots of flats and units which are then left vacant—and policy settings make it profitable for them to be so. The so-called ghost house phenomenon—well recognised in other countries such as Singapore and Canada—is becoming a major problem in our major cities, in spite of what our opponents are saying about the building industry. We still, too, have inefficient state stamp duty regimes that stop many people making appropriate housing choices.

Governments on both sides, for the most part, saw housing in the same way that Labor sees education: as an investment and a resource that would allow all Australians to build a better life and therefore a fair society. Labor's election platform in 2016 gave the government the political cover to make the changes the country needs. It should take advantage of the opportunity and make a start. Leaving a giant hole in the Commonwealth budget necessarily depletes the Commonwealth's capacity to help those struggling to get a toehold in the housing market.

Average national income per head is four times higher now than it was in the time when Menzies left office, but, in 50 years, there are fewer and fewer people able to afford their own home.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.