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

I was going to address the issue of remote Aboriginal housing a bit later in my remarks but, to enable continuity for the millions of people who read Hansard daily, I will continue along the same theme. The future of the remote housing program is absolutely critical. I know we had a debate on this in this chamber earlier this week, when Senator Scullion presented some information and my colleagues Senator Rhiannon and Senator Siewert outlined the Greens' view on that. But certainly from a Queensland perspective—I'll restrict my remarks to Queensland in this context—it is absolutely critical that this is resolved as soon as possible.

We all know that for a multitude of reasons governments of all persuasions and to a broader extent all of us in this parliament have failed repeatedly to adequately address and properly construct programs to meet the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, not solely because we don't adequately listen to and enable local communities to have adequate control and input into those programs, but that's often a key reason. But this is one program, particularly in Queensland, where the benchmarks and the results have been incredibly positive. Frankly, it baffles me sometimes, given the amount of criticism of the outcomes of programs, that the government hasn't made a huge song and dance about the success of this program, immediately committed to renew it and then called on the state governments to add to it to make it even better to address the well-known longstanding problem of inadequate housing both in quality and quantity in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and deal with that more quickly because this is a program, in Queensland in particular, where all of the targets set have been met.

The most recent review of the national partnership on remote housing in Queensland showed that Queensland exceeded its targets for Indigenous employment in capital works, in property and tenancy management, and Queensland significantly exceeded its targets for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business engagement in capital works. Queensland was seen to exceed its targets in new builds and exceed its targets significantly in refurbishment after some early problems, clearly getting a good result in housing quality for those that have been built. It is a good result in regards to maintenance, and a good result for community engagement, employment and business initiatives. So we have something that's actually working and yet the whole thing's been put at risk because of another tedious state-and-federal bunfight. Out of all the things to have a state-versus-federal-government bunfight about, it shouldn't be about something as fundamental as housing—not for anybody in the community, let alone Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, where that need has long been recognised.

The issue of overcrowding, particularly in remote Aboriginal communities and on the Torres Strait islands, is one that has been pointed to for years. We all know—and if we don't, we should—that if we can address that problem, as the program has started to do, we can also have significant positive flow-on effects in reducing some of the health problems that come with overcrowding, some of the child safety risks that come with overcrowding and some of the issues with school attendance and educational results that come with overcrowding.

So it's not simply about housing. It's about addressing a whole lot of social indicators and social needs on which we have not collectively as a parliament, as a body politic, made very good progress, despite all the talk about closing the gap. Surely—and I repeat this on behalf of the Greens, and particularly on behalf of Queenslanders—the federal government needs to be renewing that federal contribution for our state as quickly as possible. Or it can renew it for another two or three years and have its bunfight with the state government over that period and see if it can shame them into contributing more, if it doesn't think they're putting in their fair share. But don't put at risk all these existing jobs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in their own communities. It also has flow-on effects into the more general community.

I was in Cairns recently and met with people and had a look around an establishment that provides accommodation for people with long-term homelessness. They are predominantly, but not only, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the Cape York and Torres Strait. The more the overcrowding problem returns to communities on Cape York, the more people will flow into Cairns. Or when people come into Cairns for medical or family or other reasons they will stay there rather than go back. So it will have flow-on impacts with regard to overt homelessness in the centre of Cairns and in other regional communities. It is similar with the community of Yarrabah that I visited recently. I met with the mayor and councillors there. They're not part of the remote housing program at the moment in Yarrabah, but they certainly have a desire to get support for addressing their housing problems. Some of their problems relate to addressing land title issues. They don't have the capacity, and they need that government support, and there is a clear Commonwealth role for that.

I urge the federal government—and will certainly express my support for them if they act—to provide the support and the funding that are needed, because the need is there. In the remote housing review, the Queensland government estimated that we still need an additional 1,380 houses by 2026 to address existing overcrowding and to accommodate population growth. That includes addressing houses that are only moderately overcrowded. I know that in remote areas the housing is more expensive, but that's still not a large number. That takes me back to the core of this piece of legislation, which is significantly flawed. It has lots of holes. But of course it is better than nothing, despite being a massive missed opportunity. Regarding the funding injection that needs to be provided more broadly to address homelessness and housing needs—and let me say, when we're talking about remote Aboriginal communities we are taking about homelessness by any definition, including people flowing into major cities and being homeless there—it's a lack of political will and a deliberate, explicit decision of those in power to prioritise other things over the basic issue of homelessness.

Just today we've been talking in this chamber about legislation that's potentially going to give $60 billion plus in tax cuts to large corporations. However much they may promise that some of that will be reinvested in Australia—and how much could we even believe those promises anyway?—it sure as hell is not going to be invested in homelessness, and it sure as hell is not going to be invested in remote Aboriginal communities, or even less-remote ones. So that money that is there now, which will not be available if this government's legislation goes through, could be invested now in key needs like housing and homelessness.

In Queensland, one in five Queenslanders are in severe financial stress because of unaffordable rents and mortgages; 20,000 Queenslanders are homeless and 29,000 are on the social housing waiting list. In the state election the Greens in Queensland made an explicit point of prioritising massively increasing funding to provide for the construction of social housing, including in remote areas and in regional areas. That addresses this most iniquitous of social ills. After having food and water the next most crucial thing somebody needs is a home, and that is not being prioritised.

As the Greens showed in the state election in Queensland, you can raise the revenue, you can invest it and it is an investment in infrastructure—both public infrastructure and social infrastructure—that will bring not just social good but significant economic and employment good. The employment opportunities that occur with significant expansion in housing construction is undeniable, and that includes in regional communities. The Greens specifically promote the investment and the use of public funds to build social housing in regional communities, which will provide employment and will address clear, existing identified longstanding needs.

We have 29,000 people on the social housing waiting list. It depends which communities you go to as to how long that list is, and that can fluctuate over time, but clearly we need to expand the social housing stock and the community housing stock more broadly. If we prioritise things differently, then we can make a much bigger dent in that much more quickly than what is happening with this National Housing and Homelessness Agreement that we're dealing with today.

A core part of this, and the reason why it's not prioritised, is that, unfortunately, politically and economically housing is basically treated as a commodity, as a potential mechanism to make profit rather than as a basic human need. Our tax system and so much of our funding is being focused away from simply providing people with a home, and instead enabling other people to make major profits by dealing with housing as a commodity, and we need to reverse that.

It's no surprise that when we've had some action at the state level with addressing the iniquitous impact of political donations to political parties the New South Wales government acted first, in part due to longstanding pressure from the Greens in New South Wales, including Senator Rhiannon when she was in that parliament. And now the Queensland Labor government, to their credit—I pay credit to Senator Ketter and his colleagues in the state Labor government—are acting to ban donations from property developers. It is a small step, and we need to broaden that significantly. It's because it's been recognised how deeply the development industry, and the property industry more broadly, has perverted our public policy in a very deep and insidious way. We've got a long way to go to reverse that. On behalf of the Greens from Queensland and elsewhere, that's something we will continue to give a lot of priority to.