Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the housing minister. Minister, in 2023, National Cabinet agreed on nine reforms under A Better Deal for Renters. However, both the national shelter and the tenants union note that in Tasmania the state government is currently not pursuing six of the nine agreed reforms. Why is the Tasmanian government being allowed to slow-walk these agreed reforms, and will the federal government finally inject some urgency into nationally consistent protections for renters?

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Clark for his question about a subject that we have a shared passion for—that is, the situation faced by renters across our country right now. I know that the member will be meeting with his constituents, as I do. They are not necessarily young renters but renters who are middle-aged, who've got children of their own and who are living in that precarious situation where they're getting moved from property to property and sometimes having to move their kids from school to school. This is something that I don't want to see. People sometimes ask me, in this job, what gets me out of bed in the morning. One of them is this. If we go back to around the year I was born, 60 per cent of young low-income people across our country owned their own home. Today that number is 20 per cent. This tells us not only that we have a long-term issue with housing in our country but also that, just because of housing, the experience of low-income people across Australia is very different to how it was 40 years ago.

Implicit in the member's question, I think, is an acknowledgement that these important issues of the rights of renters sit at the state level. Almost all previous governments have basically said, 'We want nothing to do with this problem,' but that's not the case with our government. The Prime Minister, of course, has placed housing at the very heart of our government's agenda. So, instead of ignoring this problem, we have sat down with the states and made an agreement—the National Housing Accord. Part of that agreement is asking all the states to sign up to the important new rental standards, which are things like ending no-fault evictions, banning rent bidding, limiting excessive rent increases and ensuring minimum standards for rental accommodation.

The member asked about the performance of the Tasmanian government. Each of the states report to me about their progress. The last report I received was in December 2024. Tasmania reported that they have completed seven of nine of their requirements and that two of nine are in progress. I see you shaking your head. The national shelter numbers are from a few months earlier, which probably explains the discrepancy. But, if the member doesn't mind, I'd really appreciate the opportunity to sit down with him and go through the report. I'm very happy to work with him to push the Tasmanian government to move faster. I can tell you: no-one wants the states to move faster on this than me. It's a really important part of the government's urgent housing agenda, and I thank him for his question.