Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise to speak to this motion. Affordable housing is one of the most important challenges that we face as a nation, and this government is taking action on a number of fronts to deal with this. As the motion alludes to, this is an issue that has arisen over a long period of time, and it reflects actions taken at all three levels of government. It's the complexity and the structural nature of this issue which have made it so difficult to deal with. Now, I want to deal with the fact that this is not just a long-run problem; it's a complex economic challenge, because it involves both supply-side and demand-side dimensions, and it's only when you deal with both of those that you can make real progress with this issue.

What are some of the supply-side issues? Well, obviously Australia has not been constructing enough houses for a long time. There are a number of aspects to this. One of the issues is local government planning. There's inertia and there are undue constraints at the local government level. Federal governments have some limits on what they can do at that level, but I applaud the Treasurer and the Minister for Housing for bringing all three levels of government together—the federal government, state and territory governments and peak local government bodies—to deal with this in a coordinated way. I also applaud the fact that there was money in the last budget for the last-mile initiatives, which are often critical barriers to getting major approvals over the line.

In addition, there are workforce issues. This is an area where Australia has been facing increasing constraints. It's also an area where the government has been taking considerable action in recent years. For example, over the first three budgets of the Albanese government a considerable amount of extra money went into training additional people for the construction sector. That included an additional 15,000 fee-free TAFE and VET places in the last budget alone—$62.4 million for that. There was also considerable assistance for apprenticeships, where there had been a significant drop-off in the years preceding this government's coming to office. Also, in the previous budget, there was $26.2 million for 5,000 places in pre-apprenticeship programs over the two years to 2025.

I've been seeing the outcomes of this in my own electorate. I was at an event, on behalf of the Minister for Skills and Training, at MEGT in my own electorate to celebrate that firm's 700,000th apprentice in its decades of operation. It is one of many examples in my electorate of people obtaining qualifications and of young people starting out on careers where they will have so much to do over the coming decades. But we need more, and it's great to see more and more people going into that pipeline.

Of course, there's also the funding and finance side of the supply side, and this government has $32 billion worth of initiatives, including billions of dollars going into the community housing sector, the HAF and many other funding and financing arrangements. That will do a considerable amount to support more housing.

There's also, of course, the demand side. In my opinion, the supply side should be the priority, and the supply side has been the priority of this government in its first three budgets. But I believe that, in addition to that, targeted demand-side measures are appropriate in some circumstances. For example, Help to Buy measures are an appropriate way to help young people in particular overcome some of the generational barriers to obtaining a housing deposit. The Help To Buy Scheme that this government has put forward is a material measure that will help many thousands of people get their first toe on that ladder of homeownership over the course of their lives. For so many people, they can service a loan, but they can't pull together the deposit, so Help to Buy is a very important element of the suite of policies that we need to consider. There are other measures, of course, like the billion dollars for women in particular fleeing family violence, giving them assistance in the short run for emergency housing options. That's a series of measures that will provide material help—$5,000 for many people who are in that very vulnerable situation.

The member for Macnamara has raised an extremely important issue. It's a multidimensional issue. It's an issue which has arisen over a long period of time and it's not going to be solved overnight. It's going to require both supply-side and demand-side responses, and I've set out a few of the key ones. It's also going to require coordinated action across all three levels of government. I commend the member for raising this motion and for the opportunity to highlight some of the government's actions in this area.

Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Fraser for his diagnosis of the problem. It was very logical, and I couldn't agree more. It is primarily a supply-side problem, and we agree that there are demand measures and that it cuts across the three levels of government. We are in a housing crisis, though—let's not make any bones about it—and governments across Australia are still not doing enough. The diagnosis of the problem is correct, but there is not enough action.

Just this morning, I took a phone call from a local community member in Cook. His daughter and son-in-law, and their kids, can no longer afford to live in Cronulla. They're looking to move to Western Australia because they can't afford a house. They're schoolteachers. This man is losing his daughter, his son-in-law and his beautiful grandkids because, as a nation, we still cannot fix housing affordability. It's a national shame. Housing affordability is literally breaking up families.

I met with St Vincent de Paul three weeks ago in Gymea to discuss an especially troubling case about a young woman—a young single mother—facing homelessness. Homelessness in New South Wales is up 25 per cent this year alone. The Labor government is talking a lot about housing affordability, but prices keep going up and up. In early 2002, the median house price was 4.9 times the median gross disposable household income. In 2024, it has risen to be 8.6 times the median gross disposable household income. Treasury reports that the proportion of household income needed to service a home loan has increased from 29 per cent to 46 per cent.

Why are homes getting more and more expensive? Who's to blame? It's a failure of government. Today, in New South Wales, 50 per cent of the cost of housing is the government's planning approval process, taxes and red tape. The government has failed to get housing supply to keep up with housing demand.

On the demand side, there's been record migration under this government. Australia's population is growing faster than at any time since 1952. A record 547,000 new migrants came into the country last year, with only 164,000 new homes added. What happens when you get population growth dramatically outstripping housing supply? You get skyrocketing house prices. Somehow this government does not understand this; Labor has largely ignored the problem. The government should have been bringing in droves of immigrants in construction related industries, but it has not. Instead, it's been prioritising yoga teachers and protecting unions, not importing new skilled workers for these industries.

Furthermore, the Housing Australia Future Fund has not built any new houses in the two years since the government was elected—not a new single house in two years, in the middle of a housing crisis. It's unacceptable. This scheme has been poorly designed, and it's turning into a case study on government killing the effectiveness of their own programs with too much red tape.

What is the solution? State and local governments control housing supply. They've been too slow to release land and too slow to approve development. Who can blame them? When they approve new developments, local roads become more congested and hospital waiting rooms become overcrowded. Local schools and sports fields become full of demountables. What's the solution here? I'm calling for the federal government to fund state governments based on new home completions. We need more supply at lower prices. For every one per cent increase in the number of dwellings, house prices drop 2½ per cent. More supply helps renters too. A one per cent increase in the vacancy rate provides rent cuts of up to two per cent.

How do we get more supply? The federal government needs to start funding the state governments for this, with more infrastructure funding, GST funding and rental assistance. Federal infrastructure funding should be allocated to states based on housing completions. If a state completes more homes, it should have more infrastructure funding. The GST formula could be reworked to provide more funding to states for housing completions.

Lastly, the federal government could offer to cover rent assistance in exchange for states redeveloping their public housing. We should allow public housing tenants and critical workers to buy their own homes. It's time to empower Australians and help them take control of their lives again.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion is a really important one, and I hope we can get out of politicising it. I want to acknowledge the member for Macnamara for moving this motion on affordable housing, because it is a public policy area that is deeply personal for many of us. Without access to public housing I wouldn't be where I am today, and that's the truth. That journey, from a houso to a renter to a homeowner, also involved educational opportunities that flowed to migrants—my family—and their children. When governments got housing policy right, it made a real difference to our lives and our ability to make that contribution. I'm keenly aware that it was easier to make that journey coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s than it is right now, for a whole host of reasons that we're debating and talking about. It's why we have to get these critical policies right. It's why we have to put the politics aside and do the work necessary, instead of grandstanding on it, because it matters to all of us.

Access to good housing is a fundamental human right. It's a matter of basic dignity. We need a roof over our heads to be able to engage in our community, to fully participate at school or work, to look for and get a job, and to contribute. That, as I said, gave my family—my sister and me—an opportunity to pursue our education and give back to the country that had given us so much. That's a reality that I want for other Australians—for all Australians, actually—and I know this is the reality the Prime Minister and the new housing minister, Clare O'Neil, want for all Australians.

The issue of housing affordability and rental stress cuts very deeply across the country. It causes stress to people in my community of Wills—to the young family trying to manage alongside childcare fees, to the university student juggling study with part-time work and to the older Australian relying on their pension or their super. We have far too many Australians experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness. In fact, single women over 55 are particularly vulnerable to homelessness. It is unacceptable, in a country endowed with such wealth and opportunity, that many of our fellow Australians have nowhere to call home or are at risk of not having a home.

I recently met with Dini Liyanarachchi and Chris Sparks from Housing for the Aged Action Group—HAAG—a Melbourne based organisation that supports older Australians who are homeless or are facing homelessness. They talked a lot about older women, who are often forgotten and fall through the cracks, when we talk about vulnerable groups. They also raised elder abuse as not being spoken about as much when issues of family violence are raised. The group want interventions to focus on people who are at risk of homelessness before they end up actually sleeping rough.

I recently hosted a youth housing roundtable with Minister O'Neil. I think it was her first in her new portfolio. We heard about all of the poor rental conditions that people face, with invasive rental application requirements and stressful no-grounds evictions. A lot of the young people there described homeownership as being out of reach and said that they needed to make compromises, such as living at home with parents for longer to save for a deposit or putting studies on hold to afford rent or a bond. These are stories reflected across Australia, and they're unfortunately not new. Housing affordability is an issue that has been deepened by 10 years of inaction by the previous government, the coalition government. It's an issue that we, having come into power two years ago, are working every day to fix. It is front and centre in our mind to work on affordability and supply. Australia doesn't have enough homes, and we haven't for a while. Our priority is clear. Our objective is to build more homes for more Australians. We need to do this faster while also providing immediate support to Australians in need.

The government has an ambitious national target of building 1.2 million new homes by the end of the decade. We've added $6.2 billion in investment to build more homes. We've brought the total investment in new housing initiatives to $32 billion in just two years. We're supporting the building of new homes by growing our construction workforce—to the point that was made by the previous speaker—by $1.5 billion to states and territories for housing infrastructure works and more social housing. There are so many programs and policies that we've put in place in just a short time, including, of course, the $2.7 billion increase to Commonwealth rent assistance and the $1.9 billion increase at the budget—doubling it twice there. There's also the build-to-rent scheme, which we've introduced to boost the build of more homes to ensure Australians can have access to safe, secure and affordable housing. This $4.6 billion is money going into the pockets of one million Australians who are feeling rental stress.

I will say this in conclusion: this is something that we are working on every day. It's not about the politics. This is about building more homes and addressing what the issue is: supply, supply, supply.

Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're in the middle of the worst housing crisis that Australians have faced in generations, and right now we're debating a motion in parliament that lists all the great things that the government has done. It's as if we're telling Australians, 'You don't know how good you've got it.' For all the talk from this Labor government, literally the only things in this motion that are about new direct investment in public and community housing are elements that were won by the Greens in negotiations with Labor. Everything else is either a recycling of coalition era agreements or a misleading of the public about what Labor's games will actually achieve.

On Radio National today we heard the Minister for Housing claim that there was Treasury modelling to demonstrate that the build-to-rent scheme would build 160,000 homes over the next 10 years. However, Treasury officials have admitted in the last week that no modelling exists—zero, nada, none. In fact, experts say that Labor's scheme will give tax handouts to property developers and investors to build expensive apartments they already planned to build.

This would be a sick joke if it weren't so serious right now for the millions of Australians whom Labor refuses to help: the millions of renters who are copping massive rent increases. Many of them are one increase away from eviction into homelessness. What they need is a freeze and cap on rent increases, not more words from Labor. The first home buyers who repeatedly go to auctions and are beaten out by property investors who have tax handouts in their pockets from this Labor government need to be given a chance, need Labor to phase out those tax handouts, not more words from this Labor government.

They talk about people waiting for public housing or growing up in public housing. Well, then, build public housing! Australia is building less public housing now than it has at an any point in its history since World War II. We have a proposal that the government can steal at any point: establish a government-owned developer and then go and get it to build hundreds of thousands of good-quality homes that are then sold and rented at prices people can actually afford. This is how Australia used to do it. It is how countries around the world do it.

The bottom line is this: over the next 10 years, this Labor government is going to give $165 billion in tax handouts to property investors to go to auctions, bid up the price of housing and screw over millions of renters who are trying to buy a home. Imagine if that money went to building public housing instead. How is it fair that there are people out there right now who are skipping meals—pensioners; single mums so that their kids can to eat—so they can afford to cover their rent increases? How is it fair that they have to suffer while property investors get billions of dollars in tax handouts?

The bottom line is this: the Greens are ready and willing to work with the government to develop a housing plan that actually starts to tackle the scale of the crisis. Last year we secured $3 billion of funding for public and community housing. But what we will not accept is a Labor government—75 per cent of whose members are themselves property investors—that is refusing to touch tax handouts for property investors, refusing to invest any more in public housing and refusing to freeze and cap rent increases to give the millions of renters who are doing it tough right now a little bit of relief.

What's most galling and most frustrating about this is that Labor love to pretend that they're doing all they can, as if this housing issue is just so complicated and there's not much more they can do. Why is it, then, that countries around the world can do this? Why is it that they can build enough government-owned housing—and rent it and sell it at affordable prices? Why is it that they have higher rates of homeownership? Why is it that they pay much lower rents? Why is it that countries around the world that are much less wealthy than ours are able to do it? Why is it that, in the 1970s and 1980s, Australia was able to build enough public housing for the people who needed it? It was able to build entire suburbs of good-quality homes that workers were able to move into and build good lives. Why is it that, when Australia was a much less wealthy country with much fewer resources and much less-sophisticated construction technologies, it had the ability to build homes at a faster rate? Why is it that we were able to do it then but we can't do it now?

The bottom line is that Labor are addicted to a neoliberal ideology that is about putting money in the pockets of banks, property investors and property developers and taking it out of the pockets of ordinary renters, mortgage holders and people who are waiting to buy a home and are doing it tough. If you want a sign of how broken this housing crisis is, it is this: last year, as millions of mortgage holders were pushed into financial stress, the Commonwealth Bank recorded a record $10 billion profit. So, while the government is sitting and overseeing a housing system that makes record profits for banks and developers, the rest of us get screwed.

Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The truth is that Australia has not had enough homes to meet the needs of its people for a very long time. This is not a problem that has emerged overnight or post pandemic; it's a crisis decades in the making. We are here not because of migration, as the Liberals want you to believe, but because of poor governments, poor planning, underinvestment and an indifference to housing in general from all levels of government a long time. Because of it, rents are up, and they continue to rise. Buying a home is hard and becoming harder, and it's hurting people and our economy.

On housing, I really fear for our state of New South Wales and our nation. I fear for our young, who have grown up with parents who could afford a home on a modest wage but who themselves cannot, despite often earning higher wages. The inequity of this reality is becoming increasingly unpalatable. In New South Wales, half of our young people are leaving the state. People cannot afford to live in Sydney or the regions, and they're going elsewhere. The premier state cannot continue to be great without our best and brightest in it.

In my electorate of Bennelong, I want to do everything I can to make young people welcome by making housing more affordable. I want Bennelong to be a vibrant hub for young people to study at our two local TAFEs and at Macquarie University. Then I want graduates to work in health and tech at the Macquarie Park Innovation District or establish a business in one of our vibrant town centres. And I want them to do all that whilst living locally, in student, affordable, social, build-to-rent and market housing that is accessible. To do this in Bennelong and across the country, every level of government needs to align.

In my 10 years on the council of the City of Ryde 19,000 new dwellings were approved, 13,000 of those in the five years that I was mayor. I copped a lot of flack for that, and I danced a fine line between heritage, low density and more affordable high density. But, at the end of the day, I took the approach that building more housing was the right thing to do for young people. Even with that record, we were held back by a state government that didn't allow for more affordable housing, and we had a federal government that simply did not care.

That's what makes me proud to be part of this government: we care. We care about delivering more homes. We're not just yelling from the sidelines, as you just heard from the Greens, or blocking progress, as the Liberals do; we're getting involved in the delivery of more housing across the country. Our $32 billion Homes for Australia package is historic. Despite the political and economic headwinds we face, it is delivering. By directly investing in the construction of new homes and in growing our workforce, we will deliver more homes, which will help with affordability. Our $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund will support the construction of 30,000 new social and affordable rental homes over the next five years. Importantly, in the short term, it will turn market housing into non-market housing and will get more approved dwellings off paper and out of the ground. However, we also recognise that, while we work towards these long-term goals, there are immediate needs that must be addressed. That's why we've raised Commonwealth rent assistance not once but twice. That's why we're working with state governments to invest directly into public housing, reform renters' rights and land significant planning reform.

There is so much more to be done. This problem is so acute that we are in a national crisis. Usually, in a crisis, this parliament works together. But, on housing, we're not seeing that. What voters must know is that we have bad-faith actors in this parliament who are putting short-term politics over building more homes. Two significant measures are being held up by an unholy alliance between the Greens and the Liberals. Together, they're stopping Australians getting government help to buy their first home, and they're stopping 160,000 rental homes being built by blocking tax reforms to incentivise their construction. I say to the Greens and to the Liberals that you cannot fix a housing crisis without building more homes. This has been decades in the making, and it cannot be fixed overnight. We went to the election promising to help with the housing crisis, and in two years we made so much progress, but I fully acknowledge there's much, much more to do.

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion concerns affordable housing. It makes reference to government spending of $32 billion, purportedly, on housing. I was in the chamber when my friend the member for Bennelong was talking about the fact that the current housing crisis is due to poor government. It's certainly something that I do agree with him on, because, after two years of Labor and now a second Minister for Housing, housing affordability does indeed remain a national crisis in our country. This is a crisis that the federal government can fix and has failed to fix.

Whether it be homeownership or rentals, social or emergency housing, the government has failed to address supply shortages, instead spending more money on establishing funds and schemes. Labor governments always love establishing a fund. They love a scheme. None of these funds or schemes are going to build any more houses. The Prime Minister himself has had to admit to this failure on his housing policy by now introducing a new minister to try and fix this problem.

To recap, in March 2022 Anthony Albanese went to the Australian people and said, 'Under this government you will have cheaper mortgages and cheaper rents.' What has happened since the May election? Average Australian households, like those in my electorate of Hughes, have now paid more than $45,000 more since his government was elected, and that is absolutely due to the 12 successive interest rate rises in a row that we have had under this government. The Reserve Bank governor last week said that inflation is remaining high and interest rates will need to remain higher for longer as a result of federal and state Labor government overspending.

It's spending in the wrong place. The former housing minister announced $10 billion for housing. What did this $10 billion amount to? It was establishing the Housing Australia Future Fund, but this has proven to be nothing but a $30 million spend on consultants and executives associated with that fund. It's proven to be jobs for Labor mates, both directly and indirectly. Wayne Swan is involved with the HAFF in his dual role as Labor Party president and also head of the Cbus fund—Cbus, which has its own governance issues. For example, Cbus has CFMEU directors on its board. The CFMEU is massively contributing to inflating housing costs. There's a 30 per cent premium on all construction sites controlled by the CFMEU. But the government then wants to use Cbus funds to help with the housing fund. There should be no role for either Cbus or the CFMEU in any of the government housing schemes.

The new Minister for Housing has just reannounced the 1.2 million new homes for Australians. That's 240,000 homes that have to be built every year over five years. Eight years ago, we were building 240,000 homes per year. This year we'll be lucky to build 150,000 homes. And this government has failed on a very important factor dialling into housing affordability, which is to allow Australians the opportunity to use their superannuation, their own money, to invest in a home.

Deputy Speaker, I just want to read to you a letter I received recently from one of my constituents, Lyn, from Engadine. She points out that her youngest daughter, also a Jenny, aged 51, has three children in their 20s. She's working full time in a reasonably well paid job, she has a husband who is retired and they're paying over $1,200 per week in rent. She says: 'My daughter has never been able to own a property. She has a good amount of super, though, but she's unable to save any more for the deposit because of the huge amounts that she's paying in rent. However, if she could access her superannuation, she could now be into a home.'

I say to Lyn and her daughter and her grandchildren that this coalition, if in government, will allow people to access their superannuation—which is their own money. We'll allow Australians to have a choice as to whether they keep their money in superannuation or whether they use it to purchase a home. This will allow first home buyers into the market. It will also allow women who are coming out of a divorce or need to start their life again, and older women, the opportunity to purchase their own home.

This is a housing affordability crisis. It's a housing affordability crisis that this government has failed to address.

Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.