Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Every Australian deserves to have a safe place to call home. Every Australian deserves to have a roof over their head. Every Australian deserves a government that will look out for them. And these bills provide exactly that. These bills will make a real difference for those on social housing waiting lists across the country. They'll make a real difference for frontline workers who struggle to afford to live near their workplace and for those who need a helping hand to get back on their feet.

The Housing Australia Future Fund is a demonstration of the commitment this government has to tackling real issues and taking action. It is ambitious and it will be life changing. It is the type of policy that those opposite were too afraid to pursue. Over the past decade, we saw neglect from the coalition. They threw social and affordable housing into the too-hard basket. They left it to community housing providers and other levels of government to do the heavy lifting without the funding to get it done. Their decisions left people without a home. Their decisions left people to sleep on the street. Their decisions made the situation so much worse. Now, when they're presented with a solution, they still oppose funding for social and affordable housing. They are opposing these bills, and they are seeking to deny people homes in doing so. The coalition left people out in the cold, and Labor is building them homes.

Over the next five years, we will fund 30,000 new social and affordable homes. This is in addition to existing funding arrangements and new initiatives like the Housing Accord. These bills represent our commitment to taking action and showing leadership—leadership that is needed and has been welcomed right across the housing sector. This is the centrepiece of our commitment to provide more social and affordable homes. It looks beyond short-term solutions and the funding whims of political and budget cycles. Instead, it will lock in a secure and long-term stream of funding for social and affordable homes. It is exactly what our community housing providers, investors and construction companies have been crying out for. This is about increasing the stock in the housing market, making homes affordable, and ensuring, critically, that there is a secure stream of funding to pay for it outside of the budget cycle. This is setting up an investment pipeline—a long-term, sustainable investment pipeline, a reliable pipeline of projects to ensure housing is built year after year, not just budget by budget. This is the confidence the housing sector needs and has been asking for.

Chairing the Senate Economics Committee inquiry into these bills, I heard firsthand just how urgent and needed these reforms are. Housing experts came to our hearing and described the reforms as 'absolutely urgent', 'transformative', 'critical' and 'a timely reassertion of the national leadership on housing'. Advocates said that we need to 'start building immediately' and that this is a 'significant and much-needed new investment'. Emma Greenhalgh, the CEO of National Shelter, told the public hearing:

We cannot underplay the sense of urgency for social and affordable housing … We're playing catch up from over a decade of inaction and the fund should only just be the start.

These organisations are dealing with these issues every day, and they know just how needed these reforms are. Speaking about the need to set up a pipeline of housing investment, Ms Rebecca Oelkers, the National Director of the Community Housing Industry Association, said:

It's absolutely urgent. It's one of the biggest issues, I believe, facing Australia as a nation.

Witness after witness to our inquiry said just how urgent the issue is and how welcome it is that a Commonwealth government is finally going to do something about it. Across the board, the housing sector has been calling for these reforms. They've been crying out for these reforms. Housing providers, charities, construction companies, investors and peak bodies—the list goes on and on—all support these bills.

We are partnering with the community housing sector to provide 20,000 new social and 10,000 new affordable homes just in the fund's first five years. Four thousand of those social homes will be specifically for women and children escaping family violence as well as for older women, who are at the greatest risk of homelessness—homes for people who are in desperate need of secure, affordable, good quality accommodation. Additionally, 10,000 affordable homes will be allocated to frontline workers, including police, nurses and cleaners, who are increasingly priced out of the areas that they actually work in. This is ambitious reform, and it's reflective of the issues at hand. We need to get started.

Importantly, funding decisions will be made at arm's length from the government by Housing Australia, because people's lives should not be subject to the political colour-coded decision-making practices those opposite relied on while they were in government. Through these bills, we will ensure that future governments don't pick winners in marginal seats to win votes. Instead, decisions will be made independently based on need and geography. Stakeholders right across the housing sector have told us that we need to pass these bills. They know how urgent and much needed these reforms are. They know that they are transformative and that they will make people's lives better. It's clear what the Senate now needs to do, and that is end the delays and support these bills right now.