Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy, for swapping our chair spots tonight so I could listen to our budget reply. I too rise as a proud Western Australian and before I get onto the issue that I really want to talk about, affordable housing, I think that I need to make some rebuttal of what we just heard from Senator Back. Tonight Colin Barnett delivered the Western Australian budget. WA's budget mess is a result of Colin Barnett's failure to plan for their future. Mr Barnett enjoyed record revenue and has turned it into record deficit and record debt. A competent premier would have kept debt low in order to cope with future declines in revenue. Colin Barnett's descent into WA's worst ever financial management is complete, with the state budget confirming a $2.7 billion deficit in 2015-16 on the back of a $1.3 billion deficit in 2014-15. Mr Barnett has taken the $3.6 billion state debt he inherited from WA Labor in 2008 and turned it into a $31 billion debt in 2015-16. That debt is expected to blow-out to a massive $36 billion in 2017-18. No matter how the Abbott government and Western Australian senators might want to dress that up, Colin Barnett, Mike Nahan and the rest of the Barnett government must take responsibility for that.

Western Australians have found out this afternoon that all of their state charges have again taken a massive leap. So, if you are poor, on an unemployment benefit or on some other benefit in Western Australia, boy, you are going to cop it tough because Barnett has just made life much, much harder for Western Australians and seems quite unwilling or unable, with his arrogant attitude, to take responsibility for where he finds himself now. There are other stories out there than the one you will hear told in here by some of the Western Australian senators.

Coming off the back of the affordable housing report being released in the Senate—and I certainly thank all of the senators who worked really hard on that very complex task and, obviously, the secretariat, who did a fine job on what is a very comprehensive report, with some 40 recommendations—last Friday, Mark McGowan, the Western Australian Labor opposition leader, Gary Gray, the member for Brand, and I met with three gentlemen in Rockingham: Johnathan, Owen and Derek. Along with others, both Johnathan and Owen presented at the Perth affordable housing inquiry. We learnt at that inquiry that Owen takes people who are homeless into his own home in the Rockingham area. He provides them with a bed or they are able to camp in his backyard; he gives them food and a warm place to stay. He does that every night of the week and he is to be applauded for that. At the time of the inquiry, Johnathon was sleeping rough in his car on the beach at Rockingham and was using the cold showers and the ablution blocks at the Rockingham beachfront to clean himself up. Along with his son, Johnathan had been sleeping rough for 18 months in his car. His son was suffering severe mental illness in a very difficult situation and Johnathan's own health has suffered quite dramatically from living rough for such a long period of time. There was good news for Johnathan, because he now has a Department of Housing home. It is such good news to see that, but that happened not because there are services in the Rockingham area—there are not, unfortunately—but because the Salvation Army took his son in because his son was suffering so badly. Through Labor's Street to Home program, Johnathan was finally able to get housing after a very long time of living rough in his car.

As I said at the outset, Johnathan and Owen were joined by Derek. Derek has experienced homelessness in the Rockingham area for a number of years. Derek has some mental and physical health issues. On the day that we met him, his leg was broken and he required further treatment for that. Derek has been living rough for a couple of years. For periods of time, he has lived on his boat, moored at the local boat club. Despite the council agreeing he could continue to live in his boat, the boat club has asked him to leave. So last Friday night, when I, along with Mark McGowan and Gary Gray, met Derek, he had absolutely nowhere to go. He had nowhere to spend Friday night. I was going back to my nice warm home in Perth and Derek was going I do not know where. The Salvation Army have offices quite near where we were meeting in Rockingham—just across the road. I asked Derek what the Salvos could offer him. The answer was, 'Nothing.' I am certainly not criticising the Salvos; far from it. They do a great job in our community, but in the community of Rockingham there is absolutely nowhere for homeless people to go. The Salvos do a great job putting people in touch with other services, as they did with Johnathan's son through the Street to Home program and Johnathan himself. They offer meals and comfort, but they do not have accommodation.

Another thing that has happened in the Rockingham area is that the rangers, who were quite tolerant of people sleeping rough on the beaches, have suddenly become intolerant. So we have had incidents where rangers have taken blankets and other belongings of the homeless people in the Rockingham area. When you go into Owen's home, he has a big pile of blankets against the wall. He really is quite an amazing human being who is on a low income himself, but, because he has been homeless in the past, he sees it as his way of giving back.

Returning to Derek, I can tell you, Mr Acting Deputy President, it was very, very difficult to sit there and not be able to offer Derek any alternatives other than to turn him out as I went home to my house. Derek sits at the bottom of Australia's real housing affordability problem. Whether you rent or whether you want to buy your own home, we have a real problem with housing affordability in this country.

A few weeks ago, before last Friday, I witnessed the Western Australian police and the City of Perth evict the Nyoongar Tent Embassy from Matagarup, Heirisson Island, where a group of homeless people had set up an embassy to protest their plight. During that eviction, which I witnessed, the police issued five move-on orders, largely to Aboriginal people. Two very elderly people copped move-on orders. I tried to negotiate with the police to let the old people out of the van, but they were having none of it. They issued those move-on orders in a 45-minute period, which seems to go completely against the intent of the legislation. Someone who gets a move-on order has to be suspected of either doing something violent—that was not occurring; breaching the peace—they certainly were not doing that; hindering a law-abiding person—they were not doing that; or committing a crime—and they certainly had not committed any crime. Yet the four of them were bundled into a police wagon in front of my eyes, two of them old people, and issued move-on orders and no doubt were taken to the police station to be processed the next day, just because they were homeless and camping on Heirisson Island. Of course, it is an offence if you do not comply with a move-on order, and the maximum penalty is $12,000. Where would someone who is homeless get $12,000 from? They could be imprisoned for 12 months, so I suspect some of them, if they have been issued with other move-on orders in the past, will end up in prison for 12 months.

I commend the inquiry and the 40 recommendations to senators in this place. I say that we do need a bipartisan approach on homelessness and affordable housing. We need long-term structural change so that people like Derek can live in dignity and not have nowhere to go at the end of the day. Homelessness is something we need to act on, and we need to act on it right now, today, in a bipartisan way.