Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The housing crisis that our community is struggling through right now is causing so much pain to so many people. In every part of our country, people are having to choose between putting food on their table and paying their rent; being able to support their kids to go to school with something in their belly and the books they need and being able to make their mortgage payment for that month. That's not okay. That's not right. That's not acceptable. In a wealthy country like Australia, that families would have to do this, that grandparents would have to do this and that single parents would have to do this is abominable. It's a national disgrace. Housing is a human right for all people, and this government has a responsibility to ensure that everybody has an affordable, safe and accessible home.

The proposed legislation that the government brings to the parliament simply does not, simply will not, address the scale of the crisis that is being experienced by households across this country. When this law was first introduced, so many in the community read its title and felt hope. After all, it was called the Help to Buy Bill. And yet how many people would be helped to buy by this bill? Eighty per cent of renters? No. Sixty per cent of renters? No. Forty per cent? No. Thirty? Not even close. Not 10, not five, but 0.2 per cent of Australia's renters would be eligible to be 'helped to buy' by this bill—0.2 per cent of all of the renters struggling right now.

What's worse—and it is in fact adding insult to injury—is that this program, as minuscule and inadequate as it is, actually risks making other parts of the housing system more inaccessible, more expensive, for the rest of the community. This was given as evidence to us, clearly, in the inquiry. We had some of the best experts in the country—housing policy experts and financial experts—come to the inquiry and give their view. For example, Professor John Quiggin, professor of economics at the University of Queensland, said:

These schemes have been around forever, but the money is eventually capitalised into house prices, so the beneficiaries gain at the expense of everyone else.

The Productivity Commission has said:

There is also a risk that, over time, governments may fuel an 'assistance spiral', where the assistance makes house prices more expensive by increasing demand, prompting governments to increase assistance, pushing up prices further, and on it goes.

At the committee hearing, the government's own Department of the Treasury acknowledged that demand-side interventions do push up house prices, but the government is still ploughing forward with this scheme. The Senate inquiry was clear: this scheme would benefit only a tiny fraction of potential first home owners, while increasing prices for everyone not lucky enough to win Labor's housing lottery. We can't allow renters to be further locked out of buying a home.

Now let's talk about what this crisis actually looks like in this country. Rents have increased by 53 per cent since 2020. Renters are expected to cop an additional $5 billion in rent increases this year. Around Australia, only 0.6 per cent of rentals are affordable for someone working full-time earning the minimum wage, and close to zero—yes, that's right; I didn't misspeak; you didn't hear wrong: 'close to zero'—are affordable for people on the age pension, the DSP, JobSeeker or youth allowance.

Housing prices have increased by 46 per cent since 2020. None of the most common professions in Australia can afford to buy a home right now. It would take a full-time childcare educator until 2055 to save a deposit. A full-time childcare worker would have to save from now until 2055 to be able to have in their possession a deposit, and then they'd have to spend 92 per cent of their earnings on mortgage repayments. For a primary-school teacher, it would take until 2036 to save for a home deposit. If a primary-school teacher were then to take out a home loan, they would have to pay 53 per cent of their income on home loan repayments, forcing them into severe financial stress. The real kicker is this: for a sales assistant, the most common profession in Australia, data shows that they may never be able to save for a home deposit, due to the growth of house prices at a rate faster than wages. If you are a sales assistant, the system created by the Liberal and Labor parties has effectively forever locked you out of owning your own home.

The shortage of public and social housing is projected to increase under this government from an already unacceptable high of 750,000 homes. Over the next 10 years, the federal government will give over $176 billion in tax handouts to property investors through negative gearing and through the capital gains discount. These are policies which overwhelmingly benefit the rich and the influential. Overwhelmingly, in fact, they benefit members of parliament—who would have thunk it!—who, on average, own 2.5 properties each. I wonder why this parliament has never really been able to deal with the tax breaks and the golden parachutes that exist in this system for those who own more than one property. It's almost like it's because this place is full of them!

Now, specifically in my home town of Perth in Western Australia, the prospect of homeownership, especially for young people, is being pushed further and further out of reach by a rental crisis that this Labor government is refusing to act on. In Perth's inner suburbs, the median weekly rent is nearly $800, and it's rising, meaning that places that young families called home are now completely unaffordable. Bayswater has seen a 15 per cent increase in the median weekly rent in the last 12 months alone. Landlords have used, during this crisis, new state rental laws to punish tenants, with constituents in places like North Perth seeing a 25 to 40 per cent rise in their rents from lease to lease.

Now, the Greens have outlined our key asks in return for supporting passage of the legislation. These include action on freezing and capping rents, ending the tax handouts for property investors that stop renters buying their first home, and establishing a government owned property developer that would build 610,000 homes, to be sold off at just above the cost of construction, with rents capped at 25 per cent of income. Labor has not offered a single good-faith response to these proposals. The Greens are fighting for a two-year freeze on rent increases; a phase-out of unfair tax concessions, like negative gearing; and the reinvestment of this money into building beautiful, government built, sold and rented homes that people can actually afford. We need to take the real steps necessary to address the rental crisis. Australians deserve more than a housing lottery bill where 98 per cent of renters lose. This action must be taken.

The people of my home town, the people of Perth, particularly the young people of Perth, deserve a government made up of members of parliament that are willing to engage with the reality that the opportunity to own your own home is being pushed further and further away, that this is a crisis and that the situation, the struggle and the pain being experienced by renters right now is not okay. The increases in the inner west in the inner suburbs of our city that have seen a weekly rent rise to $800 is not okay. That is not okay. If you are a community member in the inner suburbs, you should not have to be paying that much money to have a home. You should not have to be enduring that. If you are a member of the community of Bayswater, you should not have to be in a situation where you have to try to plan for a 15 per cent increase in the median weekly rent over the course of a year. Nobody in this place could do that. Nobody in this place could make that work. Let me tell you right now that there is no budgeting tool, no session of financial counselling and no 'Oh, let's download the app' that lets you, as a single parent, find the money to make the difference when your rent rises 25 to 40 per cent between each lease. It's not possible.

The failure of places like this, the failure of this government, to tackle this crisis shows just how deeply disconnected both major parties have become from the needs of the community. When you hear—and I know you hear it—the rising sentiment that nothing changes if nothing changes, when you hear that so many no longer wish to vote for the major parties because they know that you can't keep voting for the same two parties and expect to get a different result, this is why. The people of Perth and the people of WA deserve better.