Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

For the last half-hour or so we have heard backwards and forwards sledging about whether Labor is better on the economy or the Liberals are better on the economy, and who is best on interest rates, inflation and all those sorts of things. People can make their judgement on that, but my feeling is that the great majority of Australians who are battling more and more with the impacts of these interest rate rises frankly could not care less about that sledging backwards and forwards. They are interested in how they are going to deal with the severe financial consequences many of them are facing because of not just interest rate rises but a whole range of factors that have created a massive housing affordability crisis in Australia. That is what we should be dealing with.

The core question that I asked Senator Minchin today was: what is the government now going to do to help people, in particular people in the private rental market, many of whom in recent times have suffered very severe increases in the price they have to pay for their rental and many of whom have had to shift cities because they can no longer afford to pay private rental on flats and houses they have lived in for decades? And that is where our debate should be.

I am really sick of people going back to what the average was under the Hawke-Keating government, what the average was under the Fraser-Howard government, what the average was in different eras and what the situation was with inflation figures. There are a whole lot of big economic figures around the place that people throw backwards and forwards as some sort of statistical justification. I am sure there is some value in assessing that in a general, intellectual sense but it obscures the immediate reality that many Australians are suffering enormous hardship as a result of financial stress caused by the housing affordability crisis. Frankly, we hear very little from either of the major parties about what they are going to do about that. I do acknowledge that the Labor Party in recent times has at least accepted that housing affordability is a national crisis and has made some moves towards proposing to adopt a national strategy in this area. That is a partial step forward from where the coalition has been at—which is basically, ‘We’ll do our bit over here. All the rest is the state’s fault. We’ll just tinker around where we can with some general economic management and leave it up to the market to fix it.’ That approach has clearly failed. It has been failing for many years. Frankly, that is a clear legacy and a very sad legacy of the Treasurer, Mr Costello’s, mismanagement and lack of interest in this serious area. We saw that years ago with the cynical action by the Treasurer in responding to the housing affordability crisis, which is much worse now than it was then, by initiating an inquiry by the Productivity Commission into first-home ownership. He then totally ignored all of the recommendations from the Productivity Commission which applied to the federal government and simply blamed the states for not dealing with those recommendations that related to them. That was his approach three years ago: blame the states, ignore the evidence from the inquiry that he called himself and continue to fiddle while the housing affordability situation burned.

Now we have a far worse crisis three years later with a massively increased gap between those who own their own home, those who have significant and huge mortgage burdens, and those who cannot even manage that and are in the private rental market. That was usually the broad safety net between those who could afford their own home and those who were in public and community housing. The private rental market has now itself become unaffordable for many people. We need to do something about that now. The simple question that was asked of the Leader of the Government in the Senate was: what is the government going to do now to help those people who are suffering enormously? There was no answer. That is the most serious non-response out of everything that was said today in question time from all sides about this issue. This is impacting cities and towns across Australia. In my own state of Queensland—in towns like Mackay, Townsville, Cairns, Maryborough and Hervey Bay—it is different in different areas but the common thread is a dramatic increase in private rental and people being forced out of homes they have rented for decades. People are being forced to move away from communities which they had been part of for decades. Worst of all, there is no sign of any relief down the track—there are no signs other than that it is likely to get worse. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.