Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The housing crisis we find ourselves in at the moment is one of a number of areas of public policy where Labor has had to step in after almost a decade of inaction by the previous government. The devastating consequences of this are easy to see. In my home city of Hobart, we see increasing numbers of people sleeping in cars and caravans. There are tents pitched in public parks throughout the city, and, even in my own suburb, which is a beautiful seaside suburb, there are tents pitched down by the river. People sleeping rough is just the tip of the iceberg. Our homelessness problem includes people sleeping in emergency accommodation or couch surfing. Many homeless people are lucky enough to have a roof over their heads, but they lack the certainty and stability of permanent accommodation.

The social housing waiting list in my home state of Tasmania is now at over 4,700 individuals and families, and the average time for priority applicants—and by this I mean people in the most desperate circumstances—is more than 90 weeks. What we do not see in our homelessness figures is the number of people who are in rental or mortgage stress, those who have permanent accommodation but face the uncertainty of whether they can hold on to it while they struggle to afford the other basics of living. This, as I said, is the legacy of almost a decade of the previous government sitting on their hands while housing affordability got further and further out of reach for so many Australians. Like so many messes left by the previous government through mismanagement and neglect, it has once again fallen to Labor to clean up the mess, and, like so many messes left by the previous government, addressing the legacy of almost a decade of neglect can take a long time.

We brought to the election a comprehensive suite of measures that would increase the supply of affordable housing and help more Australians realise the security of a roof over their head. We have continued to add measures, including $6.2 billion in new investment in the 2024 federal budget. The latest measures bring the Albanese government's new housing initiative to $32 billion. Our Homes for Australia Plan will help meet Australia's ambitious goal of building 1.2 million new homes between 1 July 2024 and 1 July 2029.

In addition to building new homes, our plan is also about providing relief for renters and helping Australians own their own homes. The $6.2 billion in new investment in the budget will turbocharge construction, with a $1 billion boost for states and territories to build the roads, sewers and more energy, water and community infrastructure that we need for new homes and additional social housing. It will train more tradies to build the homes Australia needs, with 20,000 fee-free TAFE and pre-apprenticeship places for the housing and construction industry. It will help nearly one million Australian households with the cost of rent by delivering $1.9 billion for the first back-to-back increase to Commonwealth rent assistance in more than 30 years.

It will provide up to $1.9 billion in concessional finance for community housing providers and other charities to support delivery of the 40,000 social and affordable homes under the Housing Australia Future Fund and National Housing Accord. It will deliver additional funding for the new $9.3 billion National Agreement on Social Housing and Homelessness, which began on 1 July. This includes a doubling of Commonwealth homelessness funding to $400 million every year, matched by the states and territories. It will improve conditions and address overcrowding through an additional $842.8 million investment in remote housing in the Northern Territory.

The budget package also includes working with the higher education sector on new regulations to require universities to increase student accommodation, taking pressure off the rental market; increasing the government's line of credit to Housing Australia by $3 billion and Housing Australia's liability cap by $2.5 billion; and directing $1 billion under the National Housing Infrastructure Facility towards crisis and transitional accommodation for women and children experiencing domestic violence, and youth. This includes increasing the proportion of grants for this investment from $175 million to $700 million to be able to support crisis and transitional housing.

We announced recently that the first $500 million disbursement from the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund will deliver more than 13,700 social and affordable homes, and these include 1,267 homes for women and children escaping family and domestic violence, and older women at risk of homelessness. In just the first round of the Housing Australia Future Fund, the Albanese government is directly supporting more social and affordable homes than the coalition did in their entire decade in office—in the entire decade that they were in office.

The Housing Australia Future Fund and all the other measures I just outlined are about helping Australians to build, rent and buy, and this bill is focused on the last of those three activities. There are many benefits to getting more Australians into homeownership. It gives more Australians the safety, security and dignity of a permanent roof over their heads. It gives Australians more economic freedom, and it helps more Australians gain a foothold in the property capital market.

Unfortunately, over a number of decades the great Australian dream of homeownership has become less and less accessible for low- and middle-income Australians. Forty years ago, almost 60 per cent of young Australians on low and modest incomes owned their own home. By 2022, that figure had fallen to 28 per cent. Twenty-five years ago, average houses cost nine times the average household income. Today it is 16½ times. Renters desperately trying to save for a house deposit are facing a double whammy as a result of rising house prices. Not only do they have to save twice as much for a deposit but increasing rents make that task even more challenging by eating into those potential savings. That is why shared-equity schemes such as the one proposed by this bill are so important to getting more Australians into the housing market.

But, when it comes to helping more Australians to own their own home, Help to Buy is not the only measure we are adopting. The government has already helped more than 100,000 people throughout Australia into homeownership through the Home Guarantee Scheme, including through the new Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee. The Home Guarantee Scheme has also been significantly expanded, making it easier for Australians to buy a home.

Over four years, the Help to Buy scheme will help 40,000 low- and middle-income Australians buy their own home. This is a shared-equity scheme in which only a two per cent deposit is required and which will cut the cost of a mortgage by up to 40 per cent and up to $380,000. As such, Help to Buy helps new homeowners to overcome two hurdles: the hurdle of saving for a deposit and the hurdle of servicing the mortgage. Through Help to Buy, the Australian government will be an equity partner alongside the homeowner. As with state and territory shared-equity schemes, the homebuyer will have the option of buying more equity in the property, if and when they can afford it, and will have the potential to own their home outright. When the property is sold or refinanced, the government as an equity partner will recoup its equity investment plus a share of capital gains.

We are seeing shared-equity schemes work successfully in the states and territories, but this will be the first national scheme of its kind. All states have agreed at National Cabinet to progress legislation so that the scheme can run nationally. But we can see from the debate leading up to this bill and from the dissenting reports of the inquiry that we're going to see a repeat of all the antics that delayed the Housing Australia Future Fund. Once again, the unholy alliance of the Greens and the coalition will join forces to delay action on affordable housing. They've already voted to delay action by more than six months by referring this bill to an unnecessary inquiry. The bill could have been in place late last year and could have already helped thousands of Australians into homeownership by now.

As I've said before in relation to the Housing Australia Future Fund, it's little surprise that the coalition will vote to delay actions on affordable housing. Australians know that they do not care about housing affordability. That much is clear, as I've said, from their almost decade of inaction while in government. The Greens, on the other hand, pretend to care, yet, every time the government seeks to deliver on our election promise, they team up with Mr Dutton and his conservative opposition and apply the brakes. We saw these kinds of tactics in relation to the HAFF, where the Greens delayed and delayed and, in doing so, claimed credit for every Labor housing announcement as if they had extracted some kind of concession from the government. During the delaying of the HAFF, I had a number of former Greens voters speak to me or contact my office to say how angry they were that the Greens were delaying action on affordable housing. And, while the Greens would like to claim that they extracted further investment from us, the truth is this: yes, we announced further funding for our Homes for Australia plan while the HAFF was being delayed, but we also announced significant further funding for our Homes for Australia plan after the HAFF passed the Senate.

So I'll go back to what I said earlier in this speech about $6 billion in additional funding announced in this year's budget. The truth is that we delivered what we would have delivered anyway. The only effect of the Greens' delaying tactic was to make thousands of Australians wait longer for investment in affordable housing. I strongly suspect that the Greens' pretence of caring about Australians struggling to afford their own home is for political, rather than moral, motives. The member for Griffith in the other place, the Greens' spokesperson on housing, made their motives quite clear, in fact, in an article he wrote that was published in February 2023. In this article, Mr Chandler-Mather said:

Allowing the HAFF to pass would demobilize the growing section of civil society that is justifiably angry about the degree of poverty and financial stress that exists in such a wealthy country.

'Demobilise': that's what it's about. In the same article, Mr Chandler-Mather revealed that the Greens had launched a doorknocking campaign that was targeted at Labor-held federal electorates.

To be clear, what the Greens political party were doing with the HAFF and are repeating now with the Help to Buy scheme is to delay implementation for political advantage. How crass can you be? It's the height of irony that, while the Greens claim to be fighting on behalf of homeless Australians and people in housing stress, it's their actions that are getting in the way of helping the very people they claim to be fighting for. For the Greens political party to delay action on affordable housing for political gain is unconscionable, and they should hang their heads in shame. The consequence of delaying this legislation is that 40,000 Australians will take longer to realise the dream of owning their own home. The Greens political party profess to care about giving Australians a roof over their heads, but what do they have to contribute when it comes to actually delivering on affordable housing? Just grandstanding. They follow their grandstanding with criticism, then they follow criticism with delay after delay after delay.

The Greens also continue to push their misguided policy of a rent freeze. This is a measure that's been roundly rejected by experts, and I remind the Greens again, as I have before in this place, what some of those experts have said. The Grattan Institute said a rent freeze would 'blunt the incentive to build more housing, leaving us with fewer, poorer quality dwellings'. The Centre for Equitable Housing, in their report on regulation of rents, stated:

… a "rent freeze", would be a poor response to the real challenges facing Australia's housing system, almost certainly making the problem worse for those in real housing stress.

So I remind the Greens that these are not the words of property investors or people with a financial interest in extracting more from renters; these are not-for-profit organisations that are dedicated to evidence based housing affordability solutions. I also remind the Greens that both these organisations go on to say that the best way to improve housing affordability is to develop more affordable housing stock—exactly the kind of action the Greens have delayed for months and months in this place.

It's time for the coalition and the Greens to get out of the way and allow Labor to get on with delivering our election commitment of helping thousands more Australians realise the dream of owning their home. I commend this bill to the Senate.