Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to discuss National Homelessness Week. National Homelessness Week aims to raise awareness of the impact of homelessness and the solutions needed to end homelessness. During the week, homelessness services and community groups educate the community and advocate for change via national and local community events, media and social media activities. In 2023, Homelessness Week was held from Monday 7 August to Sunday 13 August. The theme for Homelessness Week 2023 was 'It's time to end homelessness'. Thank you to all the wonderful organisations and individuals who hosted events or took action to advocate for an end to homelessness not just in my electorate of Petrie but right around the country.

In my own electorate of Petrie there are a number of local groups that work to help the homeless—groups like the Breakfast Club in Redcliffe, Encircle on the peninsula, Chameleon Youth Housing, the Salvation Army, St Vincent de Paul Society, The Lighthouse Centre in Deception Bay, Tuckerbox ministries ran by Baptist churches, and SANDBAG down in Sandgate and Bracken Ridge. Chameleon Youth Housing, who do a lot for youth in the area in relation to homelessness, recently ran a Housing for Happiness dinner. I want to congratulate Carmel and all the team at Chameleon for the work they do. I also want to congratulate Ozbuild, who have made a commitment to build a home for them, if they can provide the land, that will house four or five young people in need of housing. It was staged by MBRIT—Moreton Bay Region Industry and Tourism—and the dinner would have had probably over 500 people at it. It raised $110,000 on the night, which gave Chameleon a chest of about $450,000 to buy land; they still need a little bit more because they need a 600-square-metre block. Once this is achieved and the house is built by Ozbuild, we will have five more young people in housing.

Why are these young people not housed? Often it's because parents are in jail. They could be on drugs or have other addictions. It could be in relation to DV relationships that are causing one partner and the kids to be homeless. Some parents don't care. And there is also generational poverty, where you've got two or three generations of people that haven't worked, that have been on Centrelink or other sorts of welfare, and it catches up with them and they end up homeless—particularly in the last 12 months, with the massive increase in rents and repayments because of 12 interest rate rises. I want to thank Chameleon for what they're doing. They're doing an exceptional job.

I'd like to talk a little bit about what the coalition did in government. At the end of the day we had a very good record.

The coalition actually reduced acute homelessness. Between 2016 and 2021 homelessness actually fell. In the 2016 census, there were 8,200 people who were homeless. These are people who were rough sleeping and living in tents in 2016. In 2021, there were 7,636. So, despite an increase in the population, acute homelessness dropped. The number of people in severely crowded dwellings also reduced. In the 2016 census, there was 51,088 people living in severely overcrowded dwellings. After five years of the coalition government, that had fallen to 47,895. There were also people staying temporarily with others. It's commonly known as couch surfing. Under the coalition government that also reduced, going down from 17,725 in 2016 to 16,597.

I say this because the Labor government often think they have all the answers when it comes to this space, but the reality is that in the last 16 months, since they've come to office, homelessness has gone through the roof. That's their record. With 11 interest rate rises under them, what that means is that middle income families—mums and dads paying off their mortgages—have seen their mortgages double under the Labor Albanese government, and everyone who rents in my electorate and around the country has seen their rents increase, all under a Labor government. The Greens had some crazy idea about freezing rents, but they don't want to freeze all the costs associated with that. They don't want to freeze the repayments on the houses that investors have. They don't want to freeze the rates. They don't want to freeze the insurance, which has gone through the roof. So I just say to people that homelessness was reducing. The next census will be in 2026, and if the Albanese government does get a second term they'll be responsible for all of that period. It'll be interesting to see what it is then, because right now I'm seeing acute homelessness going through the roof.

The other thing is that the minister, Julie Collins, needs to look at the homelessness figure in the census, which was 123,000 people, and drill down to see how she's going to reduce it. Boarding houses went up in the last census, but we were able to work closely with the Queensland state government, for example, to look at how we could reduce homelessness in boarding houses in Queensland. The coalition government, jointly with Mick de Brenni, the Labor minister in Queensland at the time, sent a letter to all private boarding house owners about how they could improve their boarding houses to ensure that they went from homelessness to housed. Guess what? The Queensland figures dropped. It was the only state where they dropped. In the 2016 census, there were 3,600 people living in boarding houses who were considered homeless because the tenants there had no privacy. You had 20 people in a boarding house with one or two showers and one toilet and a kitchen as big as the one in my office here in Parliament House. That figure dropped down to 2,947, a reduction of 653 people in boarding houses, after the joint letter was sent by the coalition government and the Labor government in Queensland. Guess what? None of the other states wanted to do it and all their homelessness figures in boarding houses went up. So what it would be good for Minister Collins to do is look at that letter, send it out to other states as well and get them perhaps to address boarding houses in those states, because boarding houses, apart from Queensland, went up in the last census.

The other thing that went up was supported accommodation. That's basically housing for women and children escaping DV. The coalition actually built 6,000 of them in government under the safe places legislation that we brought in. That went from 21,235 in 2016 to 24,291 in 2021. The minister could ensure that those safe places give tenants a lease for a minimum three-year period, and you'd actually move all of those people out of homelessness. Some of these properties are brand new, but the people living in them are still considered homeless because they don't have a lease.

The other thing is that the Labor government, not just here but also in the states, talks down the private sector—as do the Greens, through what we see them doing. The reality is that 90 per cent of housing is in the private sector. At the moment, you've got mums and dads, that would normally look at buying an investment property, running as fast as they can from buying an investment property because of all the interest rate rises, the insurance and the inflation under Treasurer Chalmers. All of this stuff is going up, and mum and dad investors are running. We know Labor, deep down in their core, want to tax these people more. In the 2019 election, they wanted to get rid of negative gearing and they wanted to increase capital gains tax. There were a whole lot of taxes they wanted to bring in, and we know—I don't know whether it's Labor's Left or Right, but some of them—deep down they don't support the private sector when it comes to housing, even though 90 per cent of the housing is provided by mums and dads.

The only way you're going to fix this problem is to get investors to build more housing. You are not going to build enough social housing or community housing. In Queensland, the Palaszczuk Labor government ignored community housing for eight years. What did we do in this space? It was us, under Minister Sukkar at the time, that set up NHFIC, the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation. Labor, in their wisdom, want to rename that. Fine. At the end of the day, what did we do? We provided thousands and thousands more places for community housing. It was also us that set up the First Home Super Saver scheme, the First Home Loan Deposit scheme and the Family Home Guarantee. Labor members in this room and in the government voted against the First Home Super Saver scheme. And what have you done, since coming into government, for people wanting to buy their first home? Nothing. Do better. You don't own this space. We'll keep advocating and talking about this.