Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to take note of document No. 1, a response by Minister for Social Services Mr Porter to a resolution of the Senate of 2 February 2016 concerning affordable housing. The response from the minister, the Hon. Christian Porter, to the President's forwarding of the motion clearly shows the Turnbull government's continued reluctance to get involved on the issue of housing affordability. This response relates to the Senate Economics References Committee's report, Out of reach?The Australian housing affordability challenge, that was completed by the committee on its inquiry into affordable housing. The report really has provided both senators and the Australian community with a very comprehensive analysis of the challenges presented by housing affordability. As the minister's response points out, it is over 500 pages and has more than 40 detailed recommendations, which the committee I guess came to after 15 months' investigation.

This report was tabled, I think, 10 months ago now. The normal convention of the Senate would be that a response would have been provided within three months of the report being tabled, meaning that the government's response to this important document is now, even on the kindest analysis, around seven months late.

The response from the minister is that, well, they are doing a bit of work now, and that that will feed into their response. I would say that there have been more than 2½ years of no response from the Turnbull government. There have been three housing ministers. There is no housing policy. And this was shunted off to the white paper process, under the federation reform, where it sat for more than a year and a half—nearly two years—being examined, and with ideas being talked through with states and territories. That, of course, has now been sidelined, because I think it identified solutions that were either too hard or too expensive or could not be progressed with the agreement of the states and territories. So where we are up to now is that, at the collapse of the federation white paper process, the minister, with no other choice, after Treasurers from the state and territory jurisdictions said, 'Something needs to be done about housing affordability,' then decided to convene a working group coming out of the Council on Federal Financial Relations.

That working group is being commissioned to investigate innovative financing models. That is all well and good. The terms of reference you could not necessarily argue with—other than perhaps that it should not have taken so long to get to this point.

The working group convened. It was of bureaucrats only, without any representation from the housing sector, or social or community housing groups, or industry. So it is simply public servants having a look at what can be done, and it will not report until July 2016—I think that is to heads of Treasuries, and then perhaps through the COAG process or to other heads of Treasuries by the end of June, according to the minister's response, with perhaps a final report to, say, Treasurers or through to COAG sometime in the second part of this year.

That will mean that there will be three years of no action on housing affordability, at a time when housing affordability across the country continues to decline. In Melbourne and Sydney an average home loan now is over $400,000. The percentage of your income needed to service a loan in Sydney is 39.2 per cent. I think these are all statistics that were released last week. The average percentage of income needed to service a mortgage is 32.4 per cent—well above the 30 per cent that is deemed the affordability measure. This is the situation facing people now.

We have first home owners declining in the market. They now only make up 15 per cent of the owner-occupier market, down from the long-run average of 19.7 per cent. That is the situation—we are locking first home owners out. We are going to have a generation that is resigned to renting properties and who will be denied the great Australian dream of owning their own house because of the challenge of housing affordability and the federal government's refusal to see that it is an active participant in this challenge, that it has a legitimate role to play and that it needs to bring the states and territories together and drive reform—something which it promised before the last election but has failed to deliver. This letter from the minister simply apologises for the fact that the government has done nothing.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.

Debate adjourned.