Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The great CBD of Perth, which sits in my electorate, is currently going through a tough time. It turns 190 years old on 12 August this year, but retailers are closing their doors. One in three retailers expect to lay off staff in the next three months. Retail trade is down 0.7 per cent year on year. Western Australian wages growth in the year to March was the lowest in the country, growing just 1.6 per cent. Western Australian construction is down a massive 18.7 per cent on 2018 figures. Home prices have dropped a huge 9.3 per cent in the last year. And, sadly, there is an increasing incidence of homelessness and people sleeping rough in our CBD.

These things haven't been helped by the divisive rhetoric of the Western Australian Liberal Party leader, who has attacked the City of Perth. I, on the other hand, stand up for the city of Perth. It is a great city with a proud history and a very bright future. The City of Perth should be commended for their initiatives to rejuvenate the city: free parking on weekends and public holidays, a forum for retailers to raise their concerns with the city and working towards a central homeless shelter for the most vulnerable in our community. It is a shame that Perth missed out on the opportunity for a Common Ground facility when they were being funded by the federal government a number of years ago, but I hope that in the future we'll be able to build one of those great transitional assets that allows people to go from homelessness to permanent housing.

Homelessness is such a terrible waste for our community. The census tells us that, on census night 2016, some 9,000 Western Australians were homeless. Anecdotal evidence and what comes through my office tell me that that figure is, sadly, increasing. The cycle of poverty and disadvantage isn't solved by cheap slogans and is not something that can or should be spun.

I want to finish by sharing the story of someone. We've spoken a lot in this place about the importance of increasing Newstart and a lot about what that would really mean. It would obviously address many of those economic challenges that I just spoke about. I want to share one of the stories that I received. This is from Clare. Clare wrote to me on behalf of her brother. It's a fact that people who are on Newstart are often those who can't advocate for themselves or don't feel empowered to advocate for themselves. Due to illness, Clare's brother Frank has been out of work since his late 50s. He's now 64. The Newstart allowance barely allows Fred to feed himself and stay sheltered. That's the reality of Newstart. It's something we should do more about and something I hope we achieve change on very soon.