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

I sit here tonight aware that in my community right now so many people are losing their homes. Fifty-six is the latest count. I'm sadly certain that will rise. They're losing their homes to a climate driven crisis, an event which will mark, I think, a very difficult moment for our WA community. I've been given reason to reflect upon all that home is and all that homes make possible, the way that having somewhere to call your own, having a roof over your head, enables you to get through so much, to do so much—to retreat if you need to, to grow where you can, to bring people into your life, to recover, to develop as a human being, to laugh and to love. All of these things are made possible by having a safe place to call home.

Many people tonight have lost their homes. Many may be losing theirs right now while I am here. Yet it is also true that 9,000 people across our state, across WA, didn't have a home regardless of the fire events that we are struggling through. They are part of WA's homeless community. Twenty-five thousand people are on the public housing waiting list in our state, 4,000 people are in crisis or are on a priority waiting list and 3,000 of those folks have a disability. The waiting list is a year long and, in 2020, the state government added only 27 houses to the public housing stock, and it plans to build only another 47 more. At the same time, it has sold off public housing, making hundreds of millions of dollars.

This situation has developed because of a lack of basic empathy, I think. Anybody that has spent time with somebody that lives without a home, anyone that's heard their stories, anyone that's had friends that have stared down the barrel of eviction cannot fail to be moved to action without a basic lack of connection with the humanity of the person they're sitting across from.

It is an outrage that in 2021 we have 400 people across the CBD of our city whom the state government has no plans to house even during a lockdown. Even though other premiers during their lockdowns found a place for people without homes, Mark McGowan and his Labor government are doing nothing. 'Wait—hang on,' I can hear people say, 'The response has been much better this time; we've learned from our mistakes during the first lockdown.' Yes—oh wow! How good of you! They have increased the distribution of PPE. So no house, but you can have a mask!

A couple of weeks ago, many homeless folk gathered in Fremantle across from the office of the social services minister, Simone McGurk, and said: 'Look at us! Look at this problem! Address it!' What was the Premier's reaction? To pour scorn upon it, to deride it as the work of activists and to move people into accommodation for only weeks at a time and where they still have no permanent solution. This is not good enough. Everybody deserves a home to call their own. That is what I am proud to say the Greens are fighting for at this election.