Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know that right around Australia many people are feeling the pain of rental increases, but my electorate is particularly affected. We have a large proportion of residents who are renters, and the rent jumps have been shocking. I've had conversations with people in my own electorate whose landlords have put the rent up 30 per cent to 50 per cent in one jump. It is incredible pressure, and it comes after a decade of undersupply of housing. We simply have not been building enough houses in Australia for the last decade, and we have to turn that around. We absolutely have to change that.

There are some people who will tell you there's one simple answer to rent stress. Of course there's not. We need to do everything, everywhere, all at once if we want to tackle the housing affordability challenge we've got. We need to build more social housing. We need to strengthen renters' rights. We need to support private sector housing supply. We need to help young people enter the market. These are all things we are doing right now as a government. Once again, we are asking the Senate to pass the Housing Australia Future Fund. This is a key investment of $10 billion, the biggest single investment in social and affordable housing since I was a minister in the Rudd Labor government. It will deliver 30,000 new social and affordable rental homes within the first five years, including 4,000 homes for families fleeing domestic violence. If you support housing, if you support social justice, if you support emergency accommodation, you will support this bill.

We need every tool at our disposal to address the problems we're facing. That's why we're also working with the states and territories to change our planning laws to see the delivery of 1.2 million homes over the next two years. It's why we've got $2 billion dedicated to the Social Housing Accelerator. We are increasing funding for NHFIC to make more funding available for community housing. Next year we're rolling out a help-to-buy shared equity scheme for 40,000 people, low- and middle-income families, to help them by their own home. It's why we've increased Commonwealth rent assistance by 15 per cent; this is the biggest increase in Commonwealth rent assistance for the last 15 years. We're working with National Cabinet to increase renters' rights right around Australia. We're expanding tax incentives for build-to-rent projects. We're providing the states with $1.7 billion this year for housing and homelessness services as we work with them on a longer-term plan for housing and homelessness. The best way to deal with housing issues is to build more homes. That's what we're doing.