Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tomorrow is World Homeless Day, and Australia is not immune to homelessness. We have seen the rapid increase in men and women and children who no longer have a roof over their head. You will have seen it in your electorate, Deputy Speaker Freelander. Those across the floor will have seen it in their electorates. Certainly, I've seen it in my electorate of Cowper. I'm not here to blame anyone, because it has been, as I've described it, the slowest moving train wreck over decades. We should have seen this coming. Whether it was on a local government level, a state government level or a federal government level, we should have seen what was happening over the past decades.

But I do want to make the point that, over the past 20 years, every single state and territory, with the exception of Victoria, has sold off tens of thousands of social and affordable housing places and not replaced them. In New South Wales alone, there were 10,000 sold over the last decade, with only 10 per cent replaced. In South Australia, there were 20,000 sold off over the past two decades. In future, whichever government is in, that government should ensure that the billions of dollars going to the states and territories is tethered to outcomes, to building properties—because governments don't build properties; developers and builders build properties. So, if we are handing out $6.5 billion—I think that was the last figure over the last term—Australia wide, then we should expect the outcome to be properties being built, and we are not seeing that. Whichever government goes forward, it should ensure that there is an outcome based result; otherwise, drastic measures such as withholding GST should occur.

But there are some quick levers to pull that could relieve some of the steam out of the pressure pot, and the first one is a moratorium on overseas investment for the next five to 10 years. Currently, there are over 600,000 homes owned by overseas investors in Australia—600,000. Many of those are uninhabited. They are holiday homes for the wealthy to come here and enjoy what Australia has to offer. We need to stop that, because every single weekend at auctions you will see overseas investors buying Australian homes, over and above Australian citizens. That is not right. And what it does is give the market an overinflated value because those people can come in here and offer $100,000, $200,000 or $300,000 over and above the final bid of an Australian citizen, because they have the wealth to do it.

What we also need is an appropriate level of immigration. If we are bringing 1.7 million people into this country, as we did over the past 18 months, and not building a fraction of that in housing, where are they going to go? Where will they go? We have to implement an appropriate level of immigration. The third easy lever to pull would be to offer older citizens who are downsizing no stamp duty when they buy the smaller property. What's the point of selling their home and moving into a smaller home when they have to pay $40,000 or $50,000 in stamp duty? These are three easy levers to pull to address the homelessness in Australia so far. There are simple measures that need to be implemented. We need to put roofs over our people's heads.