Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll continue from where I left off earlier to say that this bill is nothing more than a gambling bill whereby $10 billion will be borrowed and the taxpayer will incur the risk. The Labor Party hope to invest that money and generate a higher return on the money they invest, rather than the rate of interest they borrowed against. Let's just assume that everything goes perfectly well, that the Labor government can borrow money at four per cent and can earn a rate of return of six per cent on this $10 billion, so they have a two per cent margin. Two per cent of $10 billion is $200 million. If you assume that every house built costs $250,000, that's about 800 houses for $200 million. Labor claim that they're going to house 6,000 people as a result of this bill.

I think the only people that are really going to be making money out of this are the fund managers who get to clip the ticket on the $10 billion that they get to gamble. Of course, these are the same fund managers that get to gamble with the trillions of dollars taken from the pockets of the workers, and of course they clip the ticket on that. We know that they generate $30 billion a year. According to the Productivity Commission, the cost of superannuation is $30 billion a year. So this will also run into millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars in fees for the people—I think it's the Future Fund—who are going to manage it. So as usual, just as with the Voice and native title, there will be fund managers and lawyers and everything clipping the ticket on this and making a great deal of money at the expense of the taxpayer.

Anyway, let's just put aside the entire risk proposition here for a minute and just assume that, yes, they do manage to generate a small rate of return and manage to build houses for 6,000 people. Where are they going to find the builders to actually build these 6,000 houses? If you didn't know already, we have a labour shortage in this country. We already have a labour crisis. Thanks to the genius of the RBA when they raised interest rates, they haven't just crushed demand; they've also crushed supply. There isn't a day that goes by when we don't read about another building company that's gone under, because building companies effectively can't issue fixed-price contracts because the cost of everything is going up rapidly. Because they can't issue fixed-price contracts to the first home buyers or whoever it is that wants to get a house built, the bank won't lend to them, because they always need a fixed-price contract. So the geniuses at the RBA are not only destroying demand but destroying supply. I've long called for a productive quantitative easing program in this country, just as Lachlan Macquarie did over 200 years ago. He built the Sydney hospital and the Sydney barracks. That is the way to productivity: to build things.

Getting back to this problem, this problem has been caused by Labor's reckless immigration program, which has seen 400,000 people come in this year. It's going to decrease to 315,000 next year, but it will total about 1.5 million over the next five years. To think that building 6,000 houses is somehow going to accommodate 400,000 people is just dreaming. What are they planning on doing? Buying a bunch of dongas and putting people in dongas? I honestly have no idea how they expect this fund to be able to fund enough social housing for the number of new migrants coming into this country, as well as, of course, the natural rate of birth, the natural increase, which off the top of my head I think is 100,000 to 150,000 a year.

We've already got problems in this country. I hear from people who have jobs but can't find a place to rent. This isn't a case of people being homeless because they don't have the money to pay rent. That issue does exist, and that's a problem as well. But we have people who have incomes and are sleeping in tents. So all Labor is doing here is putting a bandaid on a much bigger problem, and it's a deflection from the much bigger problem, which is their reckless immigration policy that Australia cannot accommodate at the moment, because we just don't have an economy that is geared towards building. What we have is an economy geared towards consuming.

This is accentuated because 49 per cent of migrants are foreign students. The problem I have with this is that the people who pocket the foreign student fees, the universities, don't have to pay any income tax. If that's not a rort then I don't know what is. You have to ask yourself why it is that the Labor Party, rather than bringing in this policy, don't bring in—I've been very vocal about this before, and I know many of the Labor people follow my Facebook page, where I've done many posts on this—a policy of charging the universities an infrastructure levy. It's not just housing that immigration puts stress on; it's also all the associated infrastructure services that come with it.

I'll compare and contrast the Labor Party of today, which is really more like a Marxist or communist party, with the old traditional blue-collar party of Ben Chifley, which, after World War II, had the Snowy Hydro scheme. He got the immigrants. There were many immigrants from Europe—from Yugoslavia and places like that—who came in. If they didn't go down to the Snowy Mountains, they went up to North Queensland, and they built things. They went and they worked and they built things. The true path to productivity and prosperity in this country is true work. It is as the words of our national anthem say: it is 'wealth for toil'. It is not 'wealth for high immigration'. It is not 'wealth for changing the price of money on the first Tuesday of every month'. It is not 'wealth for gambling a $10 billion housing fund by a bunch of bureaucrats and fund managers who are already skimming $30 billion off superannuation every year'. No, no, no, no. True productivity comes from being on the tools, not pushing pens and shuffling papers.

This is just more of a movement by the Labor Party away from being on the tools. We well remember John Button's plan in 1985. They had this great idea that they'd rationalise manufacturing, and how did that turn out for us? They rationalised manufacturing, all right. They sent it all offshore. Of course, that was a great ploy by the Labor Party, because Victoria, which was once the jewel in the Liberal Party crown because it was the manufacturing state of Australia, is now the jewel in the Labor Party crown. It has now become the Marxist capital of Australia, with a rabid university sector and a rabid superannuation sector.

This is the real shame about this. If we are going to get people into housing and build the associated infrastructure, we have to get our young people to not go to university but to TAFE. We have to get them back on the tools. This levy on universities should actually go to a housing fund for infrastructure, but it should also fund students to go to TAFE. As a matter of fact, I think it's worthy that now, if anyone joins the Army, if they want to become an officer, they go to Duntroon. Why not this: if you join the Army, you go and do an apprenticeship. We could have an actual civil engineering corps within the Army that goes about building federal highways, baseload energy power stations and dams. That is what we have to do in this country.

This idea that you can change the price of money on the first Tuesday of every month is qualitative easing insanity and has got to stop. The idea that you're going to crack down on demand, punish the hardworking Australians through higher interest rates on their mortgages and basically impose austerity is insane. We should be improving productivity. The way we do that is through quantitative easing against the seven sovereign assets that I've talked about in the past—dams, power stations, road, rail, ports, airports and telecommunications. As accountants—and I know there aren't many of you in here, but it's very simple—you debit asset and credit equity, if anyone knows how to read a balance sheet. Equity is title; debt is mortgage.

We need to stop this insanity, and I'm sick and tired of hearing politicians in this place talk about how we've always relied on foreign debt. That is a complete and utter insult to the working people in this country who get out of bed every day and put their noses to the grindstone. Foreign debt is sending us broke. Why on earth do we swap our hard assets and our children's hard assets in the form of dams and power stations for foreign paper? Why do we do that? It is that simple. It is a sleight of hand where you switch a title to a mortgage. That is how our sovereignty defines us—by controlling our currency.

That was another thing in 1985, when Paul Keating decided to open the world to the capital markets: 'We'll let the foreign debt flood in.' In 1985, the four major banks had $8 billion in foreign capital. By 2008, they had $800 billion in foreign debt. And what was that money lent against? It was lent against housing. It sent the price of housing from four to five times earnings to 12 to 13 times earnings. On top of that, in 1990 John Dawkins, a former federal education minister, came up with this great idea that every child should go to university. What did that do? That just pushed back the age our children started working from 17 or 18 to 21 or 22. It meant that, before they even started work, they were broke and brainwashed. They were broke because of this punitive HECS debt that is rising every year, and they were brainwashed by the garbage that universities teach today. Then, to top it all off, Paul Keating introduced superannuation. It's bad enough that our students have to pay HECS off when they get out and start work, and it's bad enough that they're in careers that produce nothing—push a pen and shuffle paper, 'Hey, let's get a job with the future fund and gamble $10 billion on the housing fund!'—but they then have to pay superannuation on top of the HECS and on top of income tax. Why would you bother? Why are we loading our children with all of this paper debt and leaving them with very useless skills, like pushing a pen, shuffling paper and all that sort of stuff? We have to get back on the tools if we want to solve this problem.

So I say to the Labor Party: don't move this bill—this bill is silly and you have to change your mind. This is not the way forward. I will say the same thing tomorrow morning if Senator Bragg's crypto bill comes up: this gambling of paper assets in order to think that you're generating something is completely absurd. What we need to do is to sort out our productivity. It's an overused phrase: we have a productivity crisis in this country. I will nail down what it is: we push our students into university and that delays their working lives by four years. Those can be some of the most productive years of their working careers because they're young, fit and strong. That's when we need them out on the tools, because their bodies can handle it, right?

We have these other massive industries that we're pushing people into, like the financial engineering industry. We've got more academics than we need because we're teaching more students than we need. We've got more people teaching in child care—why not get grandma and grandad looking after the child? That way, we can extend their working lives and they can enjoy the sunset on their working lives with their grandchildren. Then we can get some of the 200,000 people working in child care and shift that back into the family with grandma and grandad. We need to encourage that sort of productive capacity back into doing productive things.

We have to get back our manufacturing sector and, if we're very smart with our quantitative easing, we can build more dams, power stations, roads, rail and transport. If we can lower the cost of energy and actually improve logistics, and lower the cost of business, we will be able to encourage manufacturing back onshore. And we should actually bring back stamp duty on share trading. Forty to 50 per cent of the stock market is traded by scalpers, or high-frequency traders. The money that we could raise from stamp duty should go into abolishing payroll tax. That is another way to improve our productivity and it's another way to make it more competitive for our businesses. We can bring our businesses back onshore. Another policy that needs to happen—and I've encouraged all treasurers to do this while I've been down here—is to lift the rate of withholding tax on profits that go offshore.

I say that this future fund is just another part of the problem we have in this country. Somehow, we think that gambling on and shuffling paper is actually going to create more—it will not. I say: lower the immigration rate, get our own population working again—in real industries—so that we can build our way to prosperity.

Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A tourist in Ireland asks a local how to get to Dublin. The Irishman replies, 'Sir, first of all, I wouldn't start from here.' It's an old joke, but it's a bit like these bills. That's because if you want to do something about fixing Australia's housing supply problems you wouldn't start with a set of bills like this. The Housing Australia Future Fund is a good idea done too small. It's like doing the best paint job on a car but only doing it on the passenger-side door. What you've done is great, but you haven't done enough of it.

To explain why, let's cast our minds back to how these bills looked when they first saw the light of day. We had a set of bills that gave $10 billion to the future fund to invest however it liked, and the money it made from the investment was to go to Housing Australia. Housing Australia would use that money to subsidise affordable housing to the tune of 30,000 homes over five years. That's what the bills did—at first. And who could say no to a change like that? It sounds great. Nobody in their right mind is going to oppose construction of new homes at a time when the only way out of a housing supply shortage is to build new homes. And if that counts as a personal reflection on the opposition, I will withdraw it in advance.

Housing is unaffordable because it's a product of the market, and markets work with supply and demand. You can't easily restrict demand for homes—I'm not sure how many people who are living in tents or their cars are doing it because they want to, but I suspect it's close to zero. Some members in this place have said that the best way to reduce demand is to cut our migration intake. While I don't want to focus on this proposal for too long, we're facing labour shortages in critical industries right across the country. You would be engineering the collapse of aged care, child care, primary care and agriculture by restricting workers from coming in to fill skill gaps. It would definitely reduce demand for housing because you'd have fewer people here, but I think starting a fire to fix a fire is a pretty novel approach to firefighting.

There are some tax things you could do to reduce demand for housing. You can tweak the treatment of investments or support for first home buyers or offer incentives for downsizing, but they are small change and going to result in either swapping renters for buyers and vice versa or swapping investors for first-home buyers. Those kinds of swaps might make sense and be worth looking at, but tax reforms like this are not going to reduce how many people want homes or change how they want them. You're not reducing the demand.

If you can't make housing more affordable through demand measures, you have to look at how you can boost supply, and here, thankfully, the options are pretty straightforward. If you want more of something, make more of something. If you want more homes, build more homes. These bills do just that. They provide a pathway to building more homes. The government deserves credit for having a crack at the housing crisis. What's disappointing about their approach is how they've seen a problem and come up with a solution that in no way meets its scale. It's like they have stumbled across a house fire and they're rushing to the kennel to make sure the family dog is safe. Will it make a difference? A little bit, yes—I'm sure Fido is happy with it—but it doesn't make a difference to the bigger picture. Fido isn't the only one who needs help. The problem is the fire and, when it comes to housing, make no mistake: we have a fire on our hands.

We have a shortfall of 600,000 affordable homes right now. It's growing every year. We need way more than 30,000 homes. What puts that into perspective is what the original Housing Australia Future Fund would have meant for Tasmania. When these bills were first introduced, there was a commitment to build 30,000 homes, but there was no commitment about where they were going to be built. There were no guarantees that the homes would be built anywhere. Based on population, Tasmania might have been looking at 600 or so homes over five years when we have a social housing waitlist of nearly 4½ thousand—a list full of people who can't afford to wait five years. So 600 homes wasn't going to cut it. That was my starting position on these bills. They weren't good enough for Tasmanians.

A few weeks after the bills were introduced, the latest census figures came out and showed that Tasmania's rate of homelessness was growing faster than any other state's or territory's by a mile. Tasmania's homelessness is growing by more than 10 times the national average, and we are on track to have an extra 1,100 people without a home in the next five years. If I'd passed the bills unamended, our rate of homelessness would be growing faster than the supply of homes. We're not gaining ground by doing that; we're just losing ground more slowly. If you want to outrun a bullet, you have to move faster than it's moving, so that's what I said we've got to do.

I said that I would support the bills if there was a concrete, guaranteed commitment that it would finance the construction of 1,200 homes in Tasmania over the next five years. That is 1,200 homes in the time we will have an extra 1,100 people needing on, and that was hard to pull off. That is what it takes to outrun a bullet. I was told by the government that it was impossible to guarantee Tasmania 1,200 homes. They said it couldn't be done. But I can be pretty stubborn, so I showed them how. Then I was told by the government that it shouldn't be done, and I showed them—very politely—why I disagreed. And then they agreed, and I thought, 'Finally, we can start to get moving.'

Things were looking brighter for those 4½ thousand Tasmanians on the social housing waitlist. Things were looking brighter for the Tasmanians who didn't qualify to be on that list but are still struggling with securing a place to call home. After my deal with the government for a guaranteed 1,200 homes for Tasmania, I happily thought that Tasmanians could breathe a bit easier—and then the Greens decided these figures needed a bit more sand.

They refused to support the bills on the grounds that it didn't go far enough—not enough money. That little dance lasted a while. Then they started complaining that it was financed through an investment into the Future Fund, which manages the money by investing it in things like shares. Someone pointed out that they were arguing both that the money shouldn't be invested and also that not enough money was being invested, so they started talking about how it didn't do enough of renters. You've got to give the Greens some credit: they're like bloodhounds when it comes to finding a reason to say the Labor Party isn't going far enough.

They stayed with this rental criticism for a while. They said they wanted rent freezes, and that sounds like a good idea if you're a renter. But if you're renting out your house and all of a sudden the value of renting out your house goes down, what do you think is going to happen? Airbnb is what's going to happen. Tasmania is full of Airbnbs. Practically every rental property gets converted into an Airbnb. And why wouldn't they be? Tourists are paying $500 to stay for a weekend. A family of four might have been paying that some amount per week to live in that property as a rental. A rent freeze would mean that the family's rent stays at $500, plus a few extra dollars if the government gives you permission. But your Airbnb prices aren't frozen. You can charge whatever you want.

Rent freezes will make Airbnbs more attractive. So, you'll end up getting more Airbnbs. I don't want Tasmania to end up like some towns in regional Australia that are full of Airbnbs for holidaymakers but the people who work in the shops, the cafes and the schools cannot afford to live there, because there's nowhere left to rent. Where's that family of four going to live if every potential rental property is instead converted into an Airbnb?

The Greens focused on rent during their negotiations with the government on the bills because the cost of renting is way too high. They are right to want to do something about it. But the big tragedy was that the thing they wanted to do wouldn't help—and the thing that would help, they didn't want to do. Housing is a market—supply and demand. Rent prices can't go down until supply goes up. Supply goes up when buildings go up. Blocking 30,000 homes from going up is not helping supply. The Greens were blocking affordable housing to make housing more affordable, and they voted with the opposition—who are really taking on that title like it's a second skin, time and time again. Every player in the sector came out and asked the Greens to support these bills. Every state and territory government asked the Greens to support these bills. And the Greens said no, because it didn't do enough for renters. Renters were the line in the sand—and I say 'were' because it looks like the tide has come in, and that line in the sand has gone.

The reason I'm giving this speech today specifically is because the Greens are supporting the bill without a rent freeze or a cap. And the future fund is still going to manage the investment. It's still gambling on the stock market—which is probably the most radical way you could describe buying shares in Coles and Qantas. What used to be a line in the sand is now just the sand. And while I say all this, I don't mean it to be nasty to the Greens, because I sincerely think they had good intentions, and I sincerely think they should be congratulated for a lot of what they did. They did manage to get an extra billion dollars in investment in affordable housing, which is terrific news. I think they did a great job. I think they were right to criticise the scale and ambitions of the bills. I think they were right to push the government to go harder, and I'm really happy they have decided to end this stalemate and support this legislation.

It's just frustrating that we've had 700 homes ready to go, to start building in Tassie right away, and they've had to wait an extra six months to get the ball rolling. But I don't want to be complaining about these bills passing later than I would have liked, because the bills will pass—better than before, and that's something to celebrate. These bills are better because they were fixed by the crossbench. The Greens have played an important part in that. And the commitment to 1,200 homes puts a floor under how many homes Tasmania will see built. It's almost doubled what we would have received without this guarantee. The mainland might not appreciate the difference for Tasmania between 600 homes and 1,200 homes, but let me put it like this. Those extra homes—just the extra homes—are enough to put a roof over the head of every Tasmanian who is sleeping rough tonight. That's what kind of difference this could make. These bills are a result of hard work that began years ago, before Labor even took up the idea.

I'm grateful to the boffins at the Grattan Institute who came up with this idea. I'm grateful to Labor for endorsing it as part of their election campaign. I'm grateful to the Greens for finally backing it. It's not where I would have started. But, for where we've ended up, I'm over the moon. This will mean so much for those who need it. I won't delay it a minute longer.

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every Australian deserves to have a safe place to call home. Every Australian deserves to have a roof over their head. Every Australian deserves a government that will look out for them. And these bills provide exactly that. These bills will make a real difference for those on social housing waiting lists across the country. They'll make a real difference for frontline workers who struggle to afford to live near their workplace and for those who need a helping hand to get back on their feet.

The Housing Australia Future Fund is a demonstration of the commitment this government has to tackling real issues and taking action. It is ambitious and it will be life changing. It is the type of policy that those opposite were too afraid to pursue. Over the past decade, we saw neglect from the coalition. They threw social and affordable housing into the too-hard basket. They left it to community housing providers and other levels of government to do the heavy lifting without the funding to get it done. Their decisions left people without a home. Their decisions left people to sleep on the street. Their decisions made the situation so much worse. Now, when they're presented with a solution, they still oppose funding for social and affordable housing. They are opposing these bills, and they are seeking to deny people homes in doing so. The coalition left people out in the cold, and Labor is building them homes.

Over the next five years, we will fund 30,000 new social and affordable homes. This is in addition to existing funding arrangements and new initiatives like the Housing Accord. These bills represent our commitment to taking action and showing leadership—leadership that is needed and has been welcomed right across the housing sector. This is the centrepiece of our commitment to provide more social and affordable homes. It looks beyond short-term solutions and the funding whims of political and budget cycles. Instead, it will lock in a secure and long-term stream of funding for social and affordable homes. It is exactly what our community housing providers, investors and construction companies have been crying out for. This is about increasing the stock in the housing market, making homes affordable, and ensuring, critically, that there is a secure stream of funding to pay for it outside of the budget cycle. This is setting up an investment pipeline—a long-term, sustainable investment pipeline, a reliable pipeline of projects to ensure housing is built year after year, not just budget by budget. This is the confidence the housing sector needs and has been asking for.

Chairing the Senate Economics Committee inquiry into these bills, I heard firsthand just how urgent and needed these reforms are. Housing experts came to our hearing and described the reforms as 'absolutely urgent', 'transformative', 'critical' and 'a timely reassertion of the national leadership on housing'. Advocates said that we need to 'start building immediately' and that this is a 'significant and much-needed new investment'. Emma Greenhalgh, the CEO of National Shelter, told the public hearing:

We cannot underplay the sense of urgency for social and affordable housing … We're playing catch up from over a decade of inaction and the fund should only just be the start.

These organisations are dealing with these issues every day, and they know just how needed these reforms are. Speaking about the need to set up a pipeline of housing investment, Ms Rebecca Oelkers, the National Director of the Community Housing Industry Association, said:

It's absolutely urgent. It's one of the biggest issues, I believe, facing Australia as a nation.

Witness after witness to our inquiry said just how urgent the issue is and how welcome it is that a Commonwealth government is finally going to do something about it. Across the board, the housing sector has been calling for these reforms. They've been crying out for these reforms. Housing providers, charities, construction companies, investors and peak bodies—the list goes on and on—all support these bills.

We are partnering with the community housing sector to provide 20,000 new social and 10,000 new affordable homes just in the fund's first five years. Four thousand of those social homes will be specifically for women and children escaping family violence as well as for older women, who are at the greatest risk of homelessness—homes for people who are in desperate need of secure, affordable, good quality accommodation. Additionally, 10,000 affordable homes will be allocated to frontline workers, including police, nurses and cleaners, who are increasingly priced out of the areas that they actually work in. This is ambitious reform, and it's reflective of the issues at hand. We need to get started.

Importantly, funding decisions will be made at arm's length from the government by Housing Australia, because people's lives should not be subject to the political colour-coded decision-making practices those opposite relied on while they were in government. Through these bills, we will ensure that future governments don't pick winners in marginal seats to win votes. Instead, decisions will be made independently based on need and geography. Stakeholders right across the housing sector have told us that we need to pass these bills. They know how urgent and much needed these reforms are. They know that they are transformative and that they will make people's lives better. It's clear what the Senate now needs to do, and that is end the delays and support these bills right now.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before making my contribution, I just want to respond to a few of the points raised by Senator Walsh. In particular, we're not voting against the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill because of fear, Senator Walsh. We're voting against this bill because it is bad policy. I'll talk about why in a moment, but let me make that very clear.

Where did Senator Walsh start? With listing those who support this—state governments and industry associations in the housing sector. Well, quite frankly, surprise, surprise! A big bucket of 'free money' is supported by the state governments. This shouldn't come as a blinding shock to anybody. In fact, if you had to invent a caricature of a Labor-Greens policy proposal, this bill would be it.

Imagine you were writing a script for The Hollowmen. I'm sure many of the listeners out there remember that fine ABC show about Canberra and this place and how policy is created. Imagine you were writing a script for that show and you said: 'The main characters are sitting down in a room with a whiteboard. We need a housing policy! Oh, we haven't got enough money for a housing policy. Where can we get some? We can borrow some money! $1 billion? $2 billion? No, let's make it $10 billion! Oh, everyone will react to that—$10 billion of government borrowing. You'd have to look at that seriously, wouldn't you? And then we'll invest that money, and we'll try and make enough money out of investing that money to build some houses.' That is the policy that this government has come up with. It literally should have been a script for The Hollowmen.

The Housing Australia Future Fund will be capitalised with $10 billion of Commonwealth government debt. With a 10-year government bond rate at four per cent and rising, $10 billion of borrowing will cost the government $400 million per annum in interest-servicing costs before they build one house. Think about that for a moment—$400 million per annum before one house is built. It also adds to inflationary pressures in the economy. Borrowing $10 billion adds to inflationary pressures. So we've got a housing policy that adds to inflationary pressures and incurs $400 million of debt per annum in servicing costs alone before a house is built. If it wasn't so serious for the Australian economy, it would be a joke. It should be treated like a joke by those in this place, but it's part of the Labor-Greens alliance. They had a little tiff on the way, but in the end, this joke of a policy, with the Labor and Greens support, is going to be enacted, and that is a very sad thing for this nation.

I think we should take housing policy seriously. I think we should seek to see every Australian who wants to be in a home of their own, in a home. I think we need to look at ways—and the state governments in particular need to look at ways—of making housing more affordable and more available. That has to be done at the supply side. We need to see more homes on the market. We need to see the regulatory barriers to land being made available for the works that local government needs to do to get those blocks to be available. We need to see all of those streamlined to the absolute nth degree at the moment. We want young Australians to be able to get into the housing market.

We also want to see the unnecessary regulation—red tape, burdens—gone. There is one particular new housing development in Western Australia where I have had it quoted to me that because of the requirements of the build in that area each house is going to cost at least $30,000 more than it otherwise would if it weren't for those regulatory burdens. This isn't the way to get young people into housing. We need to get rid of that red tape and get more properties onto the market, and we need to get more land released. That is the way to bring housing prices into an affordable place in the economy so young people can get into the housing market.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023. This bill originally proposed to invest $10 billion and then spend the earnings up to $500 million a year on affordable and social housing projects. In its original formation there was no guarantee that there was going to be any money spent on housing. If the returns from that investment weren't good enough then the money just wasn't going to be spent. As everyone knows, we are here tonight because there has been pressure, campaigning and advocacy from the Greens here in this parliament and, particularly, across the country, and we have managed to negotiate an extra $3 billion to be spent on public social affordable housing upfront this year. This is $3 billion that is not dependent on a gamble on the stock market. It is $3 billion that will be spent immediately and directly this year—six times the maximum that the government had originally said it was willing to spend on an annual basis.

This extra $3 billion investment is the direct result of the Greens pressure. We have also closed the no-minimum-spend HAFF loophole and forced the Labor government to guarantee a minimum spend of at least $500 million annually from the HAFF, starting in 2024-25. These are very significant outcomes that have been achieved because of Greens pressure and Greens power. To everyone who told us over the last nine months to give in, to not stand in the way of a pittance being spent on social and community housing, and that a drop in the bucket was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, we want people to see that standing up to Labor's inadequate bills and staying at the negotiating table has delivered better outcomes. If people in the community sector praise Labor for delivering crumbs and only offering crumbs, that's all we're going to get.

The other huge outcome of us not giving in, of ramping up the campaign, of mobilising the community on this issue and of keeping working for more is that we have put the appalling circumstances of so many renters across this country front and centre on the public agenda. You need only to open up a newspaper, turn on the telly or look at your social media to see the plight of renters has been there in the public eye day after day.

The Greens supporting this bill tonight is basically us saying, 'Yes, it's a really good, solid start.' It's a solid start on investment in public and community housing. We know, however, that the campaign to be getting a good deal for renters has only just begun. Labor has refused still, despite our negotiations, to do anything to support renters. So we're putting the government on notice that the campaign with regard to renters has only just begun.

Renters have been ignored by Labor and Liberal governments alike. Rents have absolutely skyrocketed. People are living in hovels, with holes in the floor, rats under the bed and landlords who are unwilling even to make the most basic of investments to make these hovels habitable. They're paying through the nose for it, and being threatened,' If you complain, you're out on your ear—you're being evicted!' That's at the whim of greedy landlords, but governments have basically said, 'There's nothing we can do.' This government here in particular wash their hands of it and say, 'No, there's nothing we can do—it's all up to the states.' They're completely abrogating their responsibility for the basic human right for people to have a roof over their heads and a house in decent condition to call home.

The Greens have been talking to renters and to people in poverty who are paying upwards of 80 per cent or even more of their income in rent. We know what they want: they want rent controls. They want a rent freeze against the skyrocketing rents at the moment and they want rent controls. And those of them who are on income support want those rates of income support raised above the poverty line. There are few issues as fundamental as having a safe and stable place to call home. People are struggling to find a place that they can afford to live in with dignity. And just as poverty is a political choice, so is the state of housing in our country. It's a choice that this government is making daily. These choices have real consequences for Australians struggling to make ends meet, far beyond the chambers of this parliament.

The housing crisis in Australia is not a recent development; it has been simmering for far too long. We have to recognise that access to affordable and suitable housing is a fundamental human right. And it's the role of government to ensure this right for every Australian. We note that investment by the federal government and by state and territory governments in public affordable housing has completely fallen off a cliff over the last 20 years. This crisis has been developing in full sight. In tackling the public housing waiting list, we know that 640,000 people are on social housing waiting lists across the country. It's estimated that we should be spending $15 billion a year to make decent inroads into this, so the $3 billion that we have managed to negotiate with the government—and why we're supporting this bill—is a good, solid start, but it's still way less than what is needed. We're going to keep the pressure up on that!

This housing crisis extends far beyond economic considerations. It affects our society's overall wellbeing, health and stability. How many future changemakers are missing out on crucial opportunities simply because they're unable to make ends meet? As the chair of the Community Affairs References Committee, I've heard countless stories of poverty and deprivation over the last year. For so many people, the housing crisis is at the centre of so many of these stories. Housing factors, such as insecurity and lack of affordability, have been identified as core structural drivers of poverty. The Victorian Public Tenants Association characterised the relationship as interconnected, that poverty in Australia cannot be separated from our housing problem. They're wicked siblings, each driving growth in the other.

We've also heard evidence at our inquiries into poverty in Australia and in our inquiries into the worsening rental crisis of how housing represents the highest cost in most family budgets. Those with lower housing costs, especially those who own houses outright, can achieve a higher standard of living than people on the same income who have higher housing costs. The more people pay on rent the less they have for other essentials, like food, medication and essential health care. At the poverty inquiry, Isabelle told us:

… I have seen how this country treats poor people. I've been on the receiving end of it long enough to have had a gutful, and it regularly makes me think, 'Hey, maybe death might not be such a bad idea.' I was born in 1994, and the policy of the government—by which I mean every government in my lifetime—has been to break us down and then pay someone a hell of a lot of perfectly good taxpayer money to do nothing except tell us that you're going to starve us if we don't drag ourselves back up by our bootstraps.

I met yesterday with Melissa, a wonderful person and tireless advocate. She shared with me her experience of living in poverty. The story she shared with me last year really encapsulates the situation of people living in poverty and living with housing they just cannot afford. She said:

I'm on Jobseeker with a reduced capacity to work due to chronic illness and disability. I live on 330 dollars a week. It was hard to survive before inflation hit but now it's devastating.

I'm great at budgeting but now budgeting means not buying the basics. It means rationing out food to last a fortnight. If I've budgeted well I can eat one meal a day. If another expense comes up I have to choose which days I need to skip food completely. I try to choose days I have no appointments so I can sleep through the hunger.

In November last year I was diagnosed with scurvy and malnutrition. Let that sink in. A country as wealthy as Australia and I'm unable to eat enough good food to get the nutrients I need to live. This has a devastating effect on my health. How can I possibly get work-ready when I can't afford to live? Yet jobseekers are expected to be able to find employment under these conditions.

I reiterate that this was last year. Nothing had changed for Melissa when I met with her yesterday. In fact, Melissa's situation has worsened as a result of the skyrocketing costs of living. Transport, medicine, bills, food and rent—there's nothing that hasn't increase. As I've said before, it's expensive to be poor.

Finally, this is the story of someone struggling to pay rent on JobSeeker:

My rent has just gone up $60 a week. This is after a $35 a week increase the previous time. $95 in 13 months is more than a 25 per cent increase. Once I pay the new rent and allocate my fortnightly bills—I add up all my bills for the year and divide by 26 to make sure I have enough to pay them all—I have $18 left over for food and everything else. I, therefore, shop at a foodbank and purchase out-of-date food to eat. There is very little fresh fruit and veggies, and my bloodwork now indicates my heightened cholesterol—something I've never had in my whole life. I also have severe anaemia, but cannot afford iron tablets. Rent is well over half of my income. A $2 a day increase doesn't even cover my rent increase, let alone everything else.

My neighbours had their lease renewal withdrawn after they asked to negotiate a $40 a week increase. Another set of neighbours left their property after a similar increase to mine. That was three working individuals who could no longer afford the rent. But with me on income support and only .4 of a per cent vacancy rate where I live I knew that I would be homeless if I asked to negotiate. No owner is going to want a renter on Centrelink benefits because they know that they will struggle to pay the rent, despite my personal history of always paying on time. My greatest fear is becoming homeless, and one more rent increase will result in that.

It's clear that we need action on rents and we need it now. We're here tonight because we have an extra $3 billion on public and community housing. Labor first of all said that it was impossible to spend any direct money on housing, and then they did it. Now they're still saying it's impossible to coordinate national limits on rent increases, but it's not. Just like the federal government was able to coordinate putting controls on power bills, the federal government is absolutely able to coordinate rent freezes and rent controls. Every state and territory other than Tasmania is a Labor government. Now is the time, the opportunity, for our Prime Minister to get all of these people together and say: 'The situation is desperate. We are in a crisis. We need to have rent controls. We need a rent freeze.' Over the next 12 months there's going to be an estimated $4.9 billion of rent increases. Given Labor have refused to lift a finger to do anything about rent increases, all of those rent increases are now on Labor's watch. They are now the Labor Party's fault. They had the power at National Cabinet to freeze and cap rent increases, and they refused.

We're going to support the passage of these bills this week, but we are putting the government on notice. The Greens absolutely are now turning our attention to fighting for the rights of renters—renters who have been left behind by these bills. That fight has just begun. Renters are powerful and their votes are powerful. We shouldn't have to fight this hard to get Labor to limit rent increases during this rental and housing crisis but we do and so we will. Rents never go backwards, so if Labor do not act now, they are sleepwalking into a crisis that will see housing become less affordable, more people evicted and hundreds of thousands of people joining the housing waiting list. That is the reality for people right now. Nothing changes if nothing changes, so I am desperately calling on Labor to work with the Greens to address this crisis.

We could have an emergency rent freeze being put in place right now, side by side with this bill, or what we can have is Labor continuing to side with the property developers to funnel more money into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. This bill is a solid beginning but it is not enough. It does nothing for renters. We Greens are going to keep on fighting for renters, fighting for those 30 per cent of Australians in rental properties. An affordable and acceptable homes is the right of every Australian.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the debate on these bills, which are finally looking like they will get through. But I do need to make clear that these bills could have already been through this parliament but for what I will call an unholy alliance between the former government—the Liberal-National parties—and the Greens party, who obstructed its passage. I am glad that it is here today and I am glad it is here ahead of the time line that was scheduled for its return. But the reality is, in the land of mythology and the land of no, nothing good happens for Australia. The mythical world that the Greens seem to believe in and want to exist and the opposition, who just say no to everything, is a very dangerous alliance that gets in the way of good outcomes for Australians.

I want to say, as a Labor senator, I am here with renters. It is hard to rent a property if there are none being built. It is hard to rent a property if there is no supply and if you had a government like we had for the last 10 years not doing anything about supply, just saying, 'Leave it to the property developers to build. The market will provide.' Well, clearly, that failed and they didn't do their job as a government. So let me formally say that I am very pleased to inform the chamber and even more pleased to inform the Australian people that the Albanese government has yet again delivered on promises made to the Australian public only one short year ago.

So often in this place we move very quickly from one issue to the next, one idea to the next, without properly taking stock of what has been achieved. In one short year of the Albanese Labor government, young families are able to feel that little bit less anxious as they take their child to their first day of daycare, not because of the cost but because it is one small milestone that has been passed that means they can enjoy the benefits of the Albanese childcare policy. Nine-year-old children will be able to get new school shoes for school while also leaving money for mum to buy petrol for the week as the single parenting payment is raised. The dilemma between a student focusing on their studies and working pay cheque to pay cheque is eased as youth allowance and rent assistance—the largest increase in rent assistance, by the way; you won't hear that from the Greens, who are delusional about these matters—are raised, making one's commitment to their future an easier decision to make and retain. Graduates are able to choose to embark on industries such as critical minerals and clean energy, reflecting a brighter future as a burgeoning technological power with the support of the Modern Manufacturing Fund. And older Australians too, one year into the Albanese Labor government can now look to have a higher more reliable standard of care as aged-care homes are working to be staffed 24 hours a day with a registered nurse to provide around-the-clock support to citizens who have given so much to this great country. They're some of the things that we've done, and now Australians will have more help in purchasing their own home as the Albanese government makes a sustainable investment into the continued supply of housing stock in Australia. Doing nothing, as the former government did, simply didn't work. We are in a maelstrom; that's been the construction of a failure to think carefully about policy and to act properly and carefully as a government to invest where that is required in the interest of the nation.

The list that I just read demonstrates that curation of effective, measured and meaningful policy can have tangible, powerfully positive impacts on the lives of all Australians as they step through their various stages of life with the help and the support of their government, and that's not—and nor should it ever be—a for-profit enterprise that derelicts its duty to its citizens when the need is so glaringly obvious. While those opposite seem to see every citizen as a taxpayer or a recipient in some sort of financial economic accord and only see them myopically in that way, the Labor Party responsibly manages the economy but also sees the people of Australia for the full potential that they can bring on our growing journey as a nation to shared prosperity and development. But they need a government that responds to the market challenges of the times, and that is what the Housing Australia Future Fund will do.

It gives effect to a number of the government's election commitments in the housing portfolio. We committed to establishing the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, which has come to be known as the HAFF, to increase social and affordable housing and to help address acute housing needs. We're doing that with mindfulness to respond to the reality that we really need to provide a response to women and children who are fleeing domestic violence. They have very particular needs in housing. They have been ignored, denied, silenced. For older women who are at risk of homelessness, we are dedicated to making sure there is a space for those women. We are dedicated to the service of provision of a house for our veterans. Of course, regional areas—in fact, the most remote areas of the country, particularly Indigenous communities—we know are in great need.

We've gone on to establish the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council and we've given it the status of an independent statutory advisory body. The council has a critical role. It's going to inform the Commonwealth's approach to housing policy by delivering independent advice to the government on housing supply and affordability, and that will assist renters. So any discussion here in the chamber that tries to suggest one party as the champions of renters is creating a myth that should not be allowed to stand. Supply is the answer for everybody in Australia who needs a house, whether it's one that they purchased through a mortgage, one that they live in mortgage-free, one that they aspire to have and are saving towards or one that they live in as a renter.

Changing the name of the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, NHFIC, to Housing Australia was important because that's the job: housing Australia. It also streamlines its functions and makes further changes to provide certainty to the community housing sector and investors. Just this week the Albanese government announced a welcome new support for the Housing Australia Future Fund, meaning the housing legislative package is going to pass the Senate this week.

I'd like to highlight that this housing policy has both mass appeal and mass consensus across broad swathes of Australian society. Despite the interruption here in the Senate from that unholy alliance between the Liberal-National Party and the Greens political party, it has always been our commitment prior to the election, delivered through this legislation, and included the support of housing groups. It has always had, and retains, the support of the unions. It has always had, and retains, the support of businesses. It has always had, and retains, the support of people who are renting, pensioners, young people and everyone in between—and, I can happily say, many on the crossbench who are listening to community, unlike the Greens political party and the Liberal and National parties, who sought to prevent the advance of this bill.

I think all of that broad, deep, massed support shows that the Labor government brought the Australian public, good governance and investment, in a very wise policy way, to this wicked problem of so many people being in housing distress or unhoused. The policy that is borne out in the HAFF legislation before us is an extremely sensible policy. It's designed to produce reliable, out-of-budget contributions to the housing market at the bottom end. It's both sustainable and able to grow continuously as it matures. This pipeline of housing investment and support for Australia's most vulnerable dwellers will do incredibly well in improving the life of every Australian.

I note that this action of responsible government—saying what you're going to do and creating the legislation to do what you said you were going to do and then progressing it through the parliament—is very different to the inaction and dereliction of duty that so characterised and plagued the Morrison government. Mr Morrison, for all his many ministerial hats, did absolutely nothing to increase supply in a constricted housing market. Instead he chose inaction and denial. In Mr Morrison's particular case, perhaps it was a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth: with so many portfolios—Finance, Health, Treasury and Home Affairs—he didn't have sufficient time to focus on this critical issue of Australians needing a roof over their heads. But, thankfully, the Australian people voted for change. They voted for the change to an Albanese government, and we have made a habit every single day of working hard and delivering for Australians during every step of their life journeys. Getting a house, a roof above your head for yourself and your family, is a vital part of the journey, whether you're in good financial circumstances or you find yourself in very difficult financial circumstances.

As a senator for New South Wales, I want to highlight the transformational impact that this government's had on the constituents that I'm proud to represent. The Albanese government's working with states and territories to help them meet the ambitious new target to build 1.2 million well-located new homes over five years from July, through our $3 billion new homes bonus and our $500 million Housing Support Program. This builds on the Housing Accord we announced last year in the budget, which includes federal funding to deliver 10,000 affordable homes across the country, to be matched by states and territories, including New South Wales.

The reality is that there is a separation between the states and there are things we can and can't do. As much as we might have some contributions from the Greens political party in this chamber declaring the world to be a particular way, the reality is that we need to work collaboratively with the states. They have powers to do some things. They do not have powers to operate others. Last year, this government unlocked up to $575 million in funding from the National Housing Infrastructure Facility to build more social and affordable rental housing in New South Wales, and in the last budget we delivered an additional $2 billion in financing for more social and affordable rental housing in New South Wales through NHFIC. The National Housing and Homelessness Agreement is critical, and through that we've already delivered $498.2 million to New South Wales in the financial year 2022-23. That, importantly, includes funding for homelessness services. Over the next year, 2023-24, we'll deliver, through the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, $515.6 million to New South Wales. That includes $9.46 million for homelessness services. This agreement delivers funding to build more homes and support frontline homelessness services.

In terms of getting a better deal for renters, let me just be clear. I said I stand with renters. We've all rented at some point in time. Those who seek to rent are desperate for more supply. We know that there are 957,800 renters in New South Wales alone. That's not going to get shifted in a day. We have to work with the states and territories to deliver a better deal. This is about: consistent policy to implement requirements for genuine reasonable grounds for eviction; moving towards limiting rental increases to once a year; ensuring victims of domestic and family violence have the support they need to find a secure, safe, affordable home; considering options for better regulations of short-stay residential accommodation; and phasing in minimal rental standards.

This focus on housing that we are undertaking is in complete contrast to the nine years of neglect from the Liberal and National parties that we are following. It comes from a deep understanding within this government by the Labor Party that housing is an intrinsic part of the social compact. How can you possibly get up and get ready to go out for a job interview if you haven't been able to shower and get clean in the morning, if you haven't got clothes that are clean and ready to go, if you can't manage to get your mobile plugged in? These fundamental things have long been known to be hugely problematic, but we have no response. The opportunity in New South Wales is really being amplified by a group called Housing Now alliance. Their goal is to deliver more than 300,000 new homes over the next five years, and for New South Welshmen and women that is the equivalent of 30 new copies of Surrey Hills. It's a big task. It's an amazing alliance of good Aussies who are going to get together and get on with the job. I will have more to say about that in the future.

Jane Hume (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and related bills. First, let me say that housing and housing affordability is a core concern of the coalition, and we're proud of our track record on delivering housing. We created the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, we supported more than 300,000 Australians into homeownership with over 160,000 first home buyers in 2021 alone. That was a 70 per cent increase on the average of the previous decade. We protected the residential construction industry through the HomeBuilder program, which ensured that when the pandemic crisis had subsided Australia still had a construction industry. We provided $2.9 billion of low-cost loans to community housing providers to support 15,000 social and affordable dwellings, saving $470 million in interest repayments to be reinvested in more affordable housing. And we established the First Home Super Saver Scheme, helping 27,600 first home buyers accelerate their deposit savings using their superannuation.

Housing affordability is in the coalition's DNA, right back to the generation of homeowners fostered by the policies of Sir Robert Menzies—his little capitalists. Unfortunately, under the Labor government the Australian dream is now flailing. Right now, 70 per cent of young people don't think they will ever be able to buy a home. That's a damning statistic. What it shows is very clear: we need a solution, one that will actually deliver an outcome for Australians instead of simply inflating already-record levels of construction prices or costing Australians billions of dollars in interest.

It's clear in my own state of Victoria, where I heard from residents that it's becoming harder and harder to afford a home. That's why I am hosting a housing affordability forum in the electorate of Higgins, so that I can hear from local residents directly, and discuss real and practical solutions to this crisis. I encourage any interested Victorians listening tonight to join me and my good friend the Victorian shadow minister for home ownership and affordability, Jess Wilson, next Monday night on 18 September, so that we can work together for our communities.

Unfortunately, the bill that's in the chamber today will not deliver affordable housing. This package of bills is exemplary of when policy collides with flawed ideology. Let's be very clear on what this bill before the chamber is and what has been done as part of a deal behind closed doors between the radical Greens and Labor government to get this bill through. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023 establishes the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council as an independent advisory body to the Commonwealth on matters relating to housing supply and affordability. The bill's explanatory memorandum states:

… the Council will build a strong evidence base to support the Commonwealth in developing housing policy and positioning the Government to closely collaborate with the States and Territories on increasing housing supply and improving housing affordability.

This, in isolation, would potentially be something that the coalition could support. Let's be honest: this Labor government seems to have absolutely no idea of their own on housing, so the idea of having a body that can provide them with some advice is not perhaps the worst one that has come before this chamber. That said, there are still questions to answer on this, and the first one that pops to mind of course is why does the government not have faith in the Treasury to provide that independent advice? That's because it has responsibility for housing. Perhaps that's a question for the government; it's also a question for Treasury, and one that I'm sure we'll pursue at estimates. I will leave that to the Secretary of the Treasury to raise with the Treasurer and with the minister for housing in the meantime.

The Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023 amends existing legislation to replace references to NHFIC in the NHFIC Act with Housing Australia. It implements recommendation 6 of the NHFIC review, an extension of the Commonwealth guarantee of liabilities of Housing Australia to apply for contracts entered into after 30 June 2028.

The final part of this package, though, is where it really gets interesting. This is the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023, where the poor policy really gets going. Let's be clear: this is a dog of a bill: $10 billion of borrowed money will be put into a fund that invests in Australian equities, international equities, bonds and—hell's bells!—in property, ironically, with uncertain returns. This is borrowed money invested in a fund that has uncertain returns. There is no guarantee of a revenue stream from this fund. There is no guarantee that a single home will be built from this fund before the next election. There are no KPIs on the number of houses built, on where they will be built or by when they will be built.

This is their policy; this is what we're discussing tonight. Senator O'Neill lamented how long this legislation has taken to pass. Well, if the fund had been legislated last year, the Commonwealth would have lost money! It would have lost approximately $370 million. So thank heavens it isn't being implemented until now, because with the 10-year government bond rate at four per cent and rising, that $10 billion borrowing would have cost the Commonwealth around $400 million per annum in interest-servicing costs on that debt. That, combined with the loss on the investment, would have created a total loss for the taxpayer of about $770 million, so not even $1 would have been available for social and affordable housing projects. This is simply a transparent and blatant attempt to deliver an enormous, astounding number—$10 billion. But it ensures that it doesn't hit the bottom line. Ten billion dollars sounds fantastic, but there is no guarantee that there will be a return on investment and no guarantee that a single house will get built. Moreover, the IMF has already warned the government that the proliferation of these funds, these off-balance-sheet funds, should be avoided in the context of our growing debt under Labor.

This fund is bad policy from start to finish; it's just bad policy. But, as we saw this week, bad policy is now complemented with a strong dose of flawed ideology. The Labor government has gone to its natural ideological partners, the Greens, to do a deal. The Greens, let's not forget, have been pushing for radical policies like rent caps and rent freezes—policies that even a moron in a hurry knows will simply push investors out of the market and make it harder to find rental properties. The Labor government irresponsibly entertained these suggestions. One expert witness at the cost of living inquiry said in relation to rent freezes:

… the confidence in the property market at the moment has taken a real hit because of some politicians playing games. If we look at rent control in other OECD cities around the world, it's been an unmitigated failure. I can send you the reports around rent freezes and rent control—Berlin, San Francisco and New York. Dublin even had a crack—even Russia. Berlin had a crack, and it didn't work.

And so this week we've seen the final deal: yet more money, another billion dollars, rushed out the door with no thought, no KPIs, no strings attached. Indeed, it was at that cost of living inquiry that Treasury officials confirmed this. They confirmed that payments to the states and territories were not linked to any requirement to reform planning, reform zoning laws or reform development regulations, or to productivity. Imagine giving $2 billion away without linking it to more housing supply. That is what the Labor government did, and then they added to it again.

Officials also confirmed that there was no commitment sought from state governments to maintain their level of spending on social housing. That, of course, leaves the door open for states to use this payment to simply prop up their budget bottom lines. It's business as usual but it's: 'Have some more money to do it.' And, despite the budget being delivered just weeks before, these were new, unbudgeted funds rushed out the door before the end of the financial year—this, apparently, from a party of fiscal responsibility. Well, save us!

Despite the rhetoric of the Greens and the government, this bill and the $1 billion additional payment that got it through parliament will not actually deliver houses to Australians. The bill won't bring down costs, which have skyrocketed under this government. There have been 11 interest rate rises on Labor's watch. A family with a mortgage of $750,000 has to pay an additional $22,000 per year on their home loan—$22,000 for the average family. That's not the sort of money you find down the back of the couch. That's happened on Labor's watch.

Rather than reducing their spending to get inflation under control so that the RBA doesn't have to do all of the heavy lifting with the one tool it has in the shed, the government has decided, for two budgets in a row now, to spend even more. It's that natural Labor urge to spend more and more—an additional $185 billion more. The last budget was called 'unambiguously expansionary' by Betashares' chief economist. It was called 'stimulatory' by UBS's chief economist. Cherelle Murphy, the chief economist from EY, said at the time:

… inflation is already running at an annual rate of 7 per cent and more than one in every four dollars spent in the Australian economy is by a state, territory, local or federal government—

one in four dollars in this economy spent by government! No wonder inflation is out of control.

Core inflation even now is twice the RBA's recommended band. With inflation at these levels and confirmation just last week that Australia has entered a per capita recession, I can understand why so many Australians, and particularly young people, believe that owning their own home may well be out of reach. First home buyers are at the lowest level since the Gillard government. New home starts have dropped by 6.6 per cent, and new housing approvals are 13.5 per cent lower compared with this time last year—on Labor's watch.

Australians need a policy that will deliver greater supply of land, remove the grit in the wheels, get rid of zoning laws and the gridlock of approvals and get down the cost of new homes, not more vanity funds that are in Labor's stable. So my coalition colleagues and I will oppose this irresponsible and poorly thought out bill that will cost Australians billions more while not guaranteeing even a single new house for one Australian family.

I hope desperately that I have to eat my words, but I will lay odds that, come the day of the next election—the day the next election is called—there will not have been one single house completed from the Housing Australia Future Fund. Shame on you.

Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023. If this legislation and the related bills are the government's whole response to the rental crisis engulfing Australia, the response falls very short of what's needed.

Labor says it will borrow $10 million and invest it in a fund to generate returns of $500 million a year that may be spent to build 30,000 new homes over five years. That is $2.5 billion for 30,000 homes, minus the cream skimmed, but more bureaucrats to oversee the fund. Labor obviously needs some remedial education in basic maths because that is only a bit more than $83,000 per home. According to the Bureau of Statistics, it costs an average of $471,000 to build a new house in Australia, and that figure was reported in April 2022. It is also very hard to see how Labor's construction plans won't similarly take away from private construction the tradies and materials that are already in short supply. Labor needs to understand that 30,000 homes will barely make a dent in the estimated national housing shortfall of 650,000 homes. This is much too little, much too late. The housing and rental crisis is like a tortoise. You could see it coming from a long way off a long time ago.

Labor could also use some remedial education in basic economics, because the housing and rental crisis is primarily about too little supply and too much demand. One Nation's policy will increase supply and reduce demand and always puts Australia and Australians first. To increase supply, we must ban foreign ownership of all residential property in Australia. With mortgage stress forcing more Australians to sell their homes, Chinese investors are snapping them up at a rate of $8 million a day. Many of those houses are being left empty. Why has the government cleansed illegal foreign ownership of our housing? Is it because money speaks louder than looking after the vulnerable, the destitute and the homeless? Why hasn't the government moved to address the issue of foreign owned homes lying vacant for months at a time while Australians are forced to live on the streets?

On census night in 2021 more than a million dwellings were vacant. We should ban foreign ownership and give foreign owners a defined period to sell up. It would quickly increase the supply of housing available for Australians. New Zealand has done it. Canada has done it. There is no reason why Australia can't do it with a system that requires agents for sellers to cite documents proving the Australian citizenship of the buyer before the property is transferred.

To reduce demand, we must substantially reduce the huge number of immigrants Labor is bringing into Australia. A study by the Grattan Institute found in 2018 that, for every 1,000 new immigrants, up to 550 dwellings must be built to accommodate them. Across the last financial year and this one Labor will have brought 715,000 new migrants to Australia. That will require more than 355,000 new dwellings just to accommodate them. It makes no sense to allow hordes of immigrants into Australia every year when the country can't find enough homes for the people already living here. It raises the question: do they really want to build the 30,000 homes for Australians or for the migrants they've invited out here? Aussies, make up your own mind. A great example is the foreign student scam. Last financial year more than 250,000 of students were permitted into Australia. Another 187,000 are expected this year because it is a convenient back door for permanent migration. According to the Institute of Public Affairs, on average foreign students took up 70 per cent of net new housing units supplied to the Australian market. I agree with Senator Rennick: our universities generate enormous revenues from foreign students. It's a $40 billion-per-year industry, and it receives billions more from taxpayers. They should be levied to contribute to more housing so their cash cows aren't taking much-needed rental accommodation from Australians. Labor is making the housing rental crisis worse with its immigration policies and international students, and ignoring the majority of Australians who do not support high immigration. Labor's high-immigration policies are also completely incompatible with its extremist green left climate policies. High immigration means higher emissions. Go figure.

One Nation's policy is to allow Australians to access part of their superannuation to buy a family home. One Nation has been speaking to superannuation funds about investing in their clients' own homes as a tenant in common, just as many funds already invest people's super in property. We would limit this to primary residences, excluding investment properties. Upon sale of the home the super fund would take its proportionate share of any gains while the homeowner takes theirs. It would be the super fund making the investment, not the client removing some of their superannuation themselves.

Also, One Nation's policy requires tax reform. GST and state government fees and charges like stamp duty account for 45 per cent of the cost of a new home; 40 to 45 per cent of the price of a new home is actually government tax fees and charges. That's why the Australian people can't afford it. Why don't you address that issue? Many state government fees and charges were meant to be replaced by GST revenue more than 20 years ago. But, as we all know, governments are very reluctant to forgo the taxpayer revenue to which they feel entitled. One Nation also calls for a policy enabling homeowners to rent out rooms in their primary residence tax free. This would help alleviate demand in the rental market and provide a way for homeowners to meet the rising cost of living and rising mortgage payments.

State and territory governments are also making the housing and rental crisis worse, with ever-increasing restrictions on landlords. These people are not the greedy property tycoons we're told they are. The vast majority of these people—around 75 per cent—own only one investment property. They've worked hard and saved carefully to nurture this investment to provide for their income or retirement. However, these days they have fewer rights than their tenants and are facing increased costs, such as insurance and council rates. There was a story on A Current Affair earlier this year about a Victorian woman who cannot move back into her own property because the tenant, who hasn't paid rent since July last year, refuses to leave. This woman is more than $65,000 out of pocket and can't even inspect her own property.

Landlords are being forced to accept pets. They're being forced to increase notice to tenants. Queensland's Labor government has joined other states in limiting rent increases to once a year after considering a cap on rent increases. And we know the Greens want a national rent freeze, which is just about the dumbest policy ever proposed in this place. Don't tell people how to run their lives or personal businesses. Don't tell people how to look after their own property. And don't tell people what they can charge for accommodation. Property investors carry all the financial risks in this market—rising council rates, mortgage payments and insurance costs—while tenants carry virtually none.

Investors aren't the problem here. No matter how much Labor and the Greens try to demonise them. The real problem is with governments—tax grabs, record immigration, allowing foreign ownership and lack of land release. Investors are getting out of the long-term rental market and putting their money in safer alternatives like the short-term holiday accommodation market because they are fed up with the government control and have no confidence.

Today's Courier Mail reported a survey of Queensland investors that found almost 40 per cent had offloaded at least one property in the past year. Most of these are not being bought up by other investors but by people intending to occupy the property themselves. Investors are also getting out of the market in droves in Victoria. Both states have implemented greater restrictions on landlords to give the appearance they are helping renters but it is having the opposite effect and the market is tighter than ever. Last month the national rental vacancy rate hit a record low figure of 1.1 per cent. Rather than punish landlords and reduce available rentals, we need to incentivise investment in the rental market. A good start would be reducing stamp duty, reducing capital gains tax and restoring the balance of rights between landlords and tenants.

One Nation also calls for reform in the public housing sector, in particular state governments must put an end to decades-long or lifelong public housing leases. Public housing is meant to be a temporary accommodation for those whose circumstances prevent them from affording private rentals. Once people are in a position to afford private rentals they should be required to vacate public housing to make way for others who really need it.

One Nation's policy also addresses red tape roadblocks at state and local government levels. State governments and councils are taking a ridiculous amount of time to release land for new housing. Councils are also spending ratepayers' money on things which are outside their core responsibilities and must prioritise essential services in an effort to prevent unaffordable rate increases.

I acknowledge the issues which have created this housing and rental crisis are complex and have been many years in the making. This is making proposed solutions more complex too, but this is no comfort to Australian families facing increased mortgage payments and rents, facing rapid inflation and enormous energy bill increases. It is no comfort at all to the growing number of Australian families now facing homelessness. We all want to prevent homelessness and, except for the Greens, we all want families to be able to realise the great Australian dream of owning their own home. These bills do not address the cause of the national housing and rental crisis and, in terms of increasing housing supply, they are worthless. One Nation will not support this legislation. What a bitter disappointment this government has been to Australians doing it tough.

I just want to reiterate what Senator Rennick said tonight. He is spot on with the universities. Most of them claim charity status. They are a $40 billion industry. We actually give them funding to the tune of billions of dollars. They bring foreign students into the country, 250,000 this year, and they actually don't contribute. They are a strain on our facilities here in Australia. They say they are bringing so much money into the country, but why aren't we getting taxes out of the universities? It is a $40 billion industry and we get nothing out of it. We actually give them money. You have these vice-chancellors on $900,000 plus a year. Some are on over $1 million a year.

A lot of these students use university as a back door to get into Australia. Most of these university students are taxi drivers, who have come here to study accountancy or some other course and end up only using it to get a back door into Australia, and these students are taking up 70 per cent of net new housing. This is the big problem. What are we getting out of it? For what? Propping up the universities is a big problem.

You know what? It is a shame that the Liberal Party are looking at getting rid of Senator Rennick because he won't get on the ticket. He is a true conservative with values who fights for the Australian people and I support him. It is a shame that he may not be on the ticket at the next election. I would like to see other people go in this chamber like Simon Birmingham, Andrew Bragg, Jane Hume, Richard Colbeck, Dean Smith and the new one, Maria Kovacic. These are all the lefties who actually should be in the Labor Party—and some even in the Greens. You're allowing the moderates into this chamber, which is not the Senate for Australians. As far as Senator Marise Payne is concerned, I'm pleased to see the back end of her, because she's another moderate in the chamber. Thank you very much. Cheers.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I withdraw the amendments on sheet 1952, 1953 and 1957 standing in my name.

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak on the government's Housing Australia Future Fund, which is set to deliver the single biggest investment in both social and affordable housing in more than a decade. This is a key policy that we—the Labor Party, that is—took to the last election to get endorsement from the Australian people. We know that the housing system in Australia over the last decade has not been working for the people. Too many Aussies find the housing market almost impossible to enter, particularly those who are trying to find their first home. Too many Aussies are experiencing or facing homelessness. The Housing Australia Future Fund is an important step towards improving the housing situation that is currently faced here in Australia.

What we know is that the No. 1 issue driving up house prices is the lack of supply. Demand for housing far outstrips supply. This is putting home ownership out of reach for many, many Australians. This supply issue is what the fund will address. The $10 billion fund will help to address the social and affordable housing crisis that we are currently faced with. We are creating a secure, ongoing pipeline of funding for social and affordable homes. Returns from the fund will help deliver on our commitment to providing 30,000 new social and affordable rental homes in the first five years. The fund returns will also deliver the government's commitments to help address acute housing needs, including $200 million for the repair, maintenance and improvement of housing in remote Indigenous communities, $100 million for crisis and transitional housing options for both women and children impacted by family and domestic violence and for older women at risk of homelessness, as well as $30 million to build housing for veterans who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of being homeless.

Our policy is backed by many housing experts in the sector, community housing providers and every state and territory housing minister. We have not been sitting still while negotiating for passage of the bills that are before this chamber today. We are determined to tackle the housing affordability issue with every lever available to the federal government. Our $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator is being delivered to states and territories to boost the amount of social housing across the country. Furthermore, the National Housing Accord, funded in our first budget last year, is delivering 10,000 new social and affordable homes and is being matched by every state and territory government. We have also expanded the Home Guarantee Scheme and created the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee, which has already helped more than 6,000 people achieve homeownership in regional communities right across our great country.

The $1.7 billion National Housing and Homelessness Agreement continues to deliver funding for new builds and important programs to assist the most vulnerable. Further, the government is also funding a 15 per cent increase in Commonwealth Rent Assistance, the largest increase in more than 30 years. By bringing together first ministers from across the country through the National Cabinet, we saw an important commitment recently from the states and territories to reform planning laws. I think there is broad acknowledgement across most of the political spectrum, across industry and among the experts that planning laws are not fit for purpose, and I do believe that we need to do a lot more in that space. But, sadly, we have deal with the states and territories, ensuring that they come to the table on those reforms.

When it comes to addressing serious supply issues in the housing market, it's also important to acknowledge that we have to tackle this supply issue head-on, and this is what the government is determined to do. Our commitment to reform laws is being aided through incentive programs for the states and territories to assist in exceeding targets of 1.2 million new homes over five years. I've heard many contributions this evening in this place, and it's sad to say that the coalition were in government for the last 10 years and they stood by on this; for almost a decade we saw the housing market go from bad to worse. That's why, since coming to government last year, the government has wasted no time in addressing the housing affordability issue front-on. It's attacking the problem with multiple policies in collaboration with the various jurisdictions around the country, as well as working with industry.

The passage of the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill will be an incredibly important step forward and a moment for this place to really fight to turn the tide on housing affordability in this country. I particularly want to thank those on the crossbench who have been working with the government on this policy. I'm glad they've taken the approach of working with the government rather than the approach of the opposition, who have up until today still said no and who are not willing to engage in conversations with our minister. The coalition have refused to engage with the government on this fund, and they don't seem to have any interest in taking steps forward to improve housing affordability or cleaning up the mess. In fact, I don't even know what their policy is today.

This does seem to be a pattern by those opposite, but the government proposes solutions to address the housing affordability crisis that's currently before this country. It's great to see opportunities here to actually fix the problem head-on. The housing fund, as has been reported, and from the contributions of many senators in this place, has the support to see it through the chamber tomorrow. This is good news for the most vulnerable in our community, and good news for the many Australians who have aspirations to own their own homes. That's what we're about: supporting people who have the aspiration to have a roof over their head. This will mean more homes for many workers, particularly low- and middle-income workers. There will be more affordable homes for Australian renters and more homes for those who are most in need. The fund is backed by numerous stakeholders and I'm really glad to see the support of the chamber that will follow through tomorrow morning when this comes to a vote.

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we are, talking about yet another deal between Labor and the Greens this evening. The Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 is a Labor con job on all Australians. Here's what the Australian Greens' position on this bill was for six months—this is a direct quote from the Greens' housing spokesman. In reference to the government, he said that they're 'gambling $10 billion on the stock market'. That's what the Greens had to say, non-stop, for six whole months on a bill that they're now supporting! They're supporting what they called in their own words 'a $10 billion gamble on the stock market'. We all know that, at the end of the day, for all of their posturing, these two parties are one and the same. We see it all the time at state and federal levels, and I've spoken many times in this place about what happens in my own state of Tasmania in particular when Labor and the Greens get into a cozy relationship in a parliament. Labor goes to an election saying they will never do a deal with the Greens. Then they get elected and they start doing deals left, right and centre with the Greens whenever they can.

This bill is about playing accounting tricks with the budget while dodging the responsibility of actually getting houses built. Once again they are taking billions of dollars off budget not because taking it off budget helps in any way to build more houses but because it assists the government in obscuring the real truth of their own budget position. We are here debating this bill so that Labor MPs can go around and boast that they have created a $10 billion housing fund, but this isn't a bill to build houses. It's a bill to build Labor's talking points about housing. If this bill passes, $10 billion is the amount of money that the Labor government won't be spending on housing. It will be tucking $10 billion away and hoping and praying that the economy and share market goes well so maybe some money can be spent on housing later. Or maybe it will actually go backwards and they will lose money on this housing fund. Certainly, given the way the economy is going, I wouldn't be surprised, but that's the gamble that Labor and the Greens are happy to make. The Greens, indeed, purport to hate gambling—unless the gambling profits are going to be donated to their political campaigns, of course, and then they love it. But this deal shows that they are happy to gamble with taxpayer money. These two parties have no care and no responsibility about managing taxpayers' money.

The best explanation that the Greens can give for this deal for the bill that we're debating here this evening is, 'They gave us $1 billion, so we said it's fine for them to gamble another $10 billion.' Of course, when it comes to actually getting houses built, both Labor and the Greens will wash their hands of responsibility and blame state governments if they don't meet their targets. Mark my words: that is what will happen.

Meanwhile, the Greens-led councils around this country will be doing their very best to stop any of this housing actually getting built in inner-city areas where it's most needed. We see that happen time and time again around Australia, including in Tasmania and especially down in Hobart. When the private sector is trying to build houses and apartments, they get blocked or the costs are raised through different conditions so substantially that they can't go ahead. And it's the Greens on local government that are imposing these conditions on developers. The Greens will be here claiming the credit for building houses because of this deal, but then rest assured they will fly back to their inner-city seats, grab their pickets and go protest against urban housing developments as sure as night follows day.

There is nothing whatsoever in this bill that guarantees that Tasmania, my home state, or indeed any other state in this country will get the speculated number of houses a year from this fund. We will see the Labor government announce it over and over again. We will see the Greens taking credit for it. But you can guarantee that this government, which is allergic to transparency, will make it all but impossible to find out just how many houses have actually been built.

This bill is an absolute con job. It is an attempt to make a claim of spending $10 billion on housing when in actual fact this government will be doing no such thing.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, as we speak about the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and debate the housing plight of so many Australians, the people of Australia are waiting and have been waiting. They were waiting for years under the former government, who never acknowledge their responsibility for a sustainable housing supply for our nation. They always said it was a matter for the states. This is despite the fact that so many of the important levers in our housing supply also belong to the Commonwealth.

We are here today to bring forward a coherent housing policy for our nation, for which Labor has done a great deal of work and for which this bill is the next plank. It's a strong reason all our nation states, as well as the Northern Territory and the ACT, have been so firmly onboard with this bill. The coalition has a legacy of taking absolutely no responsibility for our nation's housing crisis. They've contributed to inadequate housing supply, increased rental prices and decreasing availability by simply being missing in action when it comes to social housing, trades and skills, and putting pressure and negotiating outcomes with the states and putting money on the table. This has resulted in many people who would never have thought they would confront homelessness finding themselves, as so many in our nation do at this point in time, in the unimaginable situation of being without a roof over their head—and this is before we even address the question of so many people in our nation having a roof over their head that is simply unsuitable for their needs: poorly maintained, too small, unaffordable, leaking. I've seen these examples not even in my work but just in day-to-day life.

It's an honour today to stand in this chamber and stand behind our government's Housing Australia Future Fund. We have been working towards this government housing package since long before we came into power. We intend to create real change—sustainable change—and support for the people in our nation who are relying on us. We can't change this overnight, but we can put the levers in place that start to deliver a better housing future for our nation.

As we know, people need a roof over their head—safe, suitable, secure and affordable housing—in order to be able to engage in the community, to work, to have meaningful relationships, to send their children to school, and to have dignity and wellbeing in everyday life. We know that homeownership rates among younger adults in our nation are in freefall. The vast majority of renters now believe they will never be able to buy their own home. This is a fact for this point in time that those opposite have sought to draw on in this debate, as if Labor's policies and this package are somehow part of the problem. But no, in this package and in other work done by the Labor government we put real solutions on the table, such as Western Australia's very successful Keystart program, where governments are able to have equity in a home in order to make that home more affordable. I look forward, under this Labor government, to that being a national program.

About a third of households are now renting. We need a government who's committed to bridging this gap, promoting rental affordability, affordable homeownership and investment in rental housing. Access to housing is something we should all agree is a basic human right. I've been part of the rental inquiries that are before the Senate Community Affairs Committee this year, and I've experienced firsthand the calls of so many people for action. We've seen firsthand that intervention is needed, especially for women and children impacted by family and domestic violence and older women at risk of homelessness. Often because of unemployment, divorce, economic insecurity and a tight rental market, they find themselves in circumstances they never imagined. Sadly, I know many women who have confronted such circumstances.

This is also apparent through the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Alliance, who made a submission to this inquiry where they noted that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women experience higher rates of family violence. We also see child removal, suicide, incarceration, and poorer outcomes in relation to mental health, employment and education, all as a result of a lack of access to suitable or affordable housing. Sadly, it is all too clear to me, from too many examples, how a lack of access to housing and housing support contributes to allegations of neglect that see children taken into care. This organisation said the current worsening rental crisis leaves our women and children without the fundamental human right of an adequate standard of housing, an adequate standard of living, or a right to housing. The first of their recommendations is for urgent and continued measures to meet the increased demand for housing for victim-survivors of domestic and family sexual violence and of other factors that contribute to homelessness across all our states and territories.

Labor understands this. We've worked on it, and the Housing Australia Future Fund is just part of helping us deliver the government's commitment of 30,000 new social and affordable rental homes in the fund's first five years. This won't be an easy task. We already have housing and construction delays in the private sector that have seen many people under pressure to pay rents in one house and an increasing mortgage on another that is not yet ready to be moved into. Again, we're seeing a delay in housing stock being returned to the rental market. As a nation, we have a really big challenge in front of us, but a challenge that we do not shy away from. It's a challenge that shows what a difference things like fee-free TAFE also make for ensuring that we have the skills we need to deliver the housing our nation needs.

Our social and affordable rental homes will include 4,000 homes for women and children impacted by family and domestic violence, or older women at risk of homelessness. The returns from this fund will also deliver the government's commitments to help address acute housing needs. This includes things like $200 million for the repair, maintenance and improvement of housing in remote Indigenous communities. I have seen firsthand the scale of neglect of this maintenance-and-improvement job left by the last government. It cannot be understated, because time and time again in housing negotiations the last coalition government turned a blind eye and said, 'This is a state responsibility.' We have in this package $100 million for crisis and transitional housing options for women and children affected by family and domestic violence, and older women at risk of homelessness, and $30 million to build housing for veterans who are experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness.

A couple of years ago when I was walking through the streets of Perth I saw a gentleman scouting for money on the streets of St Georges Terrace and I got chatting to him. He was a homeless veteran. There's so much we can do to make a difference. In this instance I just encouraged him to reach out to the Department of Veterans' Affairs or my office to get reconnected to his payments, and he did. He did it all himself.

He sent me an email of gratitude. I didn't need to be thanked for the basic thing of recognising the importance of his service and, more than that, the importance of his identity as a worthwhile person. I put aside the stigma, the discrimination and his sense of self that had deteriorated so much and I said, 'Just reconnect to the services you need.' I was really pleased with that outcome, but it did show me how much more needs to be done and how important it is to the day-to-day wellbeing of so many, including our veterans.

I'm proud to be part of a government that intends to make a fundamental difference to the people of our nation who are willing to put the time in and who have worked so hard on these reforms. It's about making a difference to housing and putting roofs over people's heads. We have done this in partnership with so many organisations who have advocated for these reforms, investments and policy changes. All of us in the Senate now have an opportunity to back this package—a package that contains what so many experts and housing organisations have called for for a great many years. Together we can reshape Australia's housing policy, setting in place a legacy where the Commonwealth understands its place in working with the states to ensure that every Australian has suitable, affordable housing that provides them a life and a benchmark for dignity.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it's important I put some facts on the record about how we find ourselves here this evening. Nine months ago, when Labor's signature housing bill was first introduced, it was nothing more than a $10 billion gamble on the stock market. There wasn't a single dollar of guaranteed investment in public and affordable housing in the bill and renters were invisible in the public debate. That's where we were nine months ago when Labor introduced their bill.

Since then, thanks to the Greens actually standing up to Labor and demanding that Labor be better than what they were nine months ago on housing, we've seen a guarantee of an extra $3 billion invested right now into building public and affordable housing in Australia. That's thanks to the Greens. We've also seen Labor's original policy position that there could be no more than $500 million per year disbursed out of the Housing Australia Future Fund changed from a maximum of $500 million to a minimum of $500 million, so instead of no more than $500 million per year able to be disbursed now at least $500 million a year is able to be disbursed from the Housing Australia Future Fund.

That's what you get when the Greens, with the balance of power in the Senate, are prepared to stand up and demand that the Labor Party do better. All the while the Labor Party said that they couldn't do any better. They said that there was no money available for direct investment into social, affordable and public housing in Australia. They said, 'It all has to go through the HAFF, and there'll be no disbursements from the HAFF until the 2024-25 financial year.' That was Labor's position at the start of this debate nine months ago. Well, how things have changed! They've changed because the Greens were prepared to stand up. What that should say to everyone in this chamber, and what I have no doubt it says to a lot of people in Australia, is that pressure works. I know why people put the Greens into this place: because they know we will stand up and demand better and they know that we won't sell ourselves cheaply.

Speaking about selling yourselves cheaply, I've had some pretty good laughs over the past 24 hours listening to some of the contributions in this place and some of the media and social media contributions, particularly from two senators from my home state of Tasmania: Senator Lambie and Senator Tyrrell. Let's not forget Senator Lambie and Senator Tyrrell have spent months parroting Labor Party speaking points against the Greens. They've come up with the dumbest, stupidest internet memes about the Tasmanian Greens senators—me and Senator Whish-Wilson—that you would ever want to see, and they have spent months deceiving Australians, or trying to deceive Australians, into believing that the Greens' refusal to pass this legislation over the last few months has in some way delayed houses from being built. That is an absolute untruth, because, if you look at the public comments from Minister Collins, at the legislation and at the explanatory memorandum, you will see there would have been no disbursements from this fund until the 2024-25 financial year, which is still eight or nine months away as we stand here tonight. So the only thing the Greens have delayed is the passage of the legislation. We have not delayed the building of a single new home anywhere around Australia. What we have done, despite being told by Senator Lambie, Senator Tyrrell, Prime Minister Albanese, Minister Collins, serried ranks of Labor senators and the vast majority of media pundits that it couldn't be done, is to deliver an extra $3 billion into public and affordable housing in Australia and turn a $500 million annual cap into a $500 million annual floor. We have turned it from, 'You can't spend any more than $500 million,' into, 'You have to spend more than $500 million in every year from the HAFF.'

Why did we do this? Well, there is a fundamental difference between how the Greens view housing and how the Labor and Liberal parties view housing. Minister Collins, two or three months ago on 7.30, said the quiet thing out loud. She said, 'Labor wants housing to be an investment and asset class in Australia.' Just have a think about that for a minute, colleagues. This is the Minister for Housing saying that Labor wants housing to be an investment and asset class in Australia. There's the difference right there between the Labor Party and the Greens, because the Greens see housing as a place for people to make a home. That's what the Greens see housing as. Labor, as confirmed by the Minister for Housing, sees housing as an investment and asset class in Australia, and it is exactly because the major parties in this place see housing as an investment and asset class that we are in the mess we're in today, where people cannot afford to pay their mortgage or cannot afford the rent rise after rent rise after rent rise that they are facing from unscrupulous landlords who simply see housing as an investment and asset class and who forget that houses are a place where Australians make a home for themselves and for their families and friends. That's the fundamental difference here between the Greens and everyone else. It's why we stood up on this and it's why we've delivered those three billion extra dollars.

So I say to Senator Lambie and Senator Tyrrell, I say to the Labor Party, I say to the LNP opposition and I say to all the media and political pundits around the country who said that we should simply roll over and pass Labor's package unamended: there are three billion reasons why you were wrong. Pressure works, and you will never see a better example of that than this evening.

I also have to laugh, or chuckle, at some of the responses from Labor ministers to dorothy dixers asked by Labor senators in question time today. Who would have known that a whole bunch of Labor ministers have suddenly developed a soft spot for renters? You could have knocked me over with a feather when Senator Wong and Senator Farrell were all hand on heart empathising with how tough renters are doing. Why were they doing that? Because renters have found their voice in this country. The one-third of Australians who rent have found their voice. Do you know what else they've found? They've found a party that is prepared to represent them, a party that is prepared to stand up for them. That party is the Australian Greens. We are here to represent renters, and we're putting Labor on notice that we're not going to stop demanding that Labor do more for renters. We're not going to stop until there are rent controls in this country. We're not going to stop until unlimited rent rises are unlawful in Australia, because houses are a place where people make a home.

Whether you own your own home, you're paying it off or you rent, the house that you live in is the place that you make a home in. We respect that. That's why we are saying that Labor has to do more about corporate profiteering, which is driving up inflation, which is forcing the RBA to put up interest rates, making paying off a mortgage more and more unaffordable for more and more Australians. It's why we are saying that Labor should use the existing powers in the Reserve Bank Act to override the RBA when it goes on its flawed mission of a record series of interest rate rises in Australia, because ultimately in a democracy the power should reside in the hands of those who are accountable to the people, and that is all of us in this place.

Labor has to do more for mortgage holders. Labor certainly has to do more for renters. I've listened again to the excuses that have been ruled by Labor senators: 'Rents are a state and territory issue.' Here is news for Labor. Every state and territory government bar one is actually a Labor government at the moment. Every mainland state and territory is governed by Labor. They are in the same political party as you people. The governments of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia are in your political party. Don't come in here and try to convince us that you can't convince them to act. What a load of rubbish. With any luck, as soon as people in my and Senator Brown's home state of Tasmania get a chance to go to the polls, that will be the end of the last Tory government in the country. Will it make any difference to this? No, because there is no political will in the Labor Party in Canberra to do anything meaningful for renters. That's the problem we are facing here—a lack of political will to do anything for renters.

So Labor's on notice. There are more bills coming down the line in this space, in this parliament, and Labor shouldn't take our support on those bills for granted, because we're putting Labor on notice: stump up and do something for renters. Stump up and put in place some rent caps or a freeze on rent increases. Make unlimited rent rises unlawful. Do something for renters and stop being the party of property speculators and investors. That's what the Labor Party has become. It's almost as if we're dealing with the Australian landlords party rather than the Australian Labor Party.

It's time that renters had a fair go in this place. If there's one great thing that's happened in this debate, it's that renters have found their voice, and they've understood that, if they organise and come together, they are a powerful, powerful political force. They've also come to understand that their votes are powerful. Further, they've understood that the Labor Party has abandoned them—absolutely abandoned renters to the market. There are double-digit rent increases going on right around the country. There are renters getting notices of rent increases of double digits multiple times a year. No wonder homelessness is a growing problem in this country. My home state of Tasmania has the fastest rate of increase in homelessness in the country. In Tasmania, we are at the epicentre of the housing and rental crisis in Australia, yet there are Tasmanian government senators who think it's fine to do nothing for renters.

We are here, unashamedly, as the party of renters. We hear their concerns and we are here to give voice to and act on their concerns. We're proud to have delivered what we have through standing up and demanding that Labor be better: an extra $3 billion available immediately to build public and affordable homes in Australia, and turning a $500 million annual disbursement from a maximum to a minimum. But the job isn't over yet, and there's a long, long way to go before renters have real justice in Australia.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on these housing bills: the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023 and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023. I think one thing that unites everybody in this chamber or listening to the speeches on these bills is our desire for more affordable housing for those who want to buy their own family home or those who need to or want to rent. That is something that absolutely unites us all. What divides us is how to achieve that goal.

What we see yet again in these bills is Labor putting rhetoric, spin, and catchy names ahead of the substance that will actually deliver the outcome. Not only is this poor legislation; it is quite a cruel hoax, I think, on Australians around this nation, including so many in my home state of Western Australia, who are absolutely desperately suffering with Labor's cost-of-living increases, to the point where they cannot afford rent or they cannot afford their mortgages or, certainly, to get a mortgage for the first time. These bills are a rerun of what we have now come to expect from those opposite in the Labor government: legislation that is poorly thought through and poorly defined and has insufficient time in Senate committees to improve the bills through the collective wisdom of those in this chamber, as we have done since the Senate was formed.

They are also guillotining important bills like this to push them through before the Greens have a chance to change their mind. I've got to say it was very noteworthy, when I was standing in this chamber earlier in support of a Greens urgency motion, that I observed that Labor, halfway through their first term in government, would be hearing from the Australian Greens that they had been gaslighted and betrayed. I have to say to the Australian Greens: you might think that you've done a good thing with the deal on this bill. But let me tell you: in 18 or 12 months time, when we go to the next federal election, and you look at what the Labor Party has done—not just with this legislation but with so much of its other legislation—Australia will, sadly in this case, not just be standing still but it will be going backwards.

Let's have a look at their record so far, halfway, or a little bit more now, through their term. Not a single one of Labor's promised 30,000 new social and affordable homes have even been started. Even with this bill, I have to ask the Australian Greens: if they haven't been able to build one of 30,000 in over half their term, how on earth are they going to be able to start delivering any of the rest of it which they've promised? Past performance is certainly a good indicator of future performance, and on new social and affordable housing they have a big, fat fail. This has had a significant impact on so many Australians who desperately need these homes and who have been sold a lie by Labor.

To Labor's much-vaunted Help To Buy program with its promised commencement date of 1 January this year: it's late, with no announcement of when this program will even start. That's a second failure of promise and of commitment to some of Australia's most vulnerable people, particularly exacerbated now through the cost-of-living crisis. Thirdly, rents have continued to increase under this government. The fact is that ABS data shows Australian actual rents by new tenants increasing by 14 per cent over the year to February this year, and they're still going up.

For these, and for many other reasons, the coalition will not support the establishment of the Housing Australia Future Fund. It's a hoax, it's a fraud and it's most likely going to be the biggest slush fund that Labor have managed to get for themselves. It's bad policy, simply for the fact that it will be capitalised with $10 billion worth of additional Commonwealth government borrowing. No matter how they try to write it on the books it's still a borrowing, and in this desperate, last-ditch attempt to get its troubled housing bills through this chamber the Albanese government has been forced to cut yet another deal. As I said, this will absolutely be a deal where, in a few months time, the Greens will stand up here and accuse the Labor government of betrayal and gaslighting. That I can guarantee. The sad thing is that not only will the government have been gaslighting the Greens again but they will have let down every Australian who will look at these political announcements and think: 'I'm actually going to be able to get some social housing and I'm actually going to be able to have affordable rent. I might actually be able to start getting my first home,' or, 'I won't actually have to try to sell my house because I cannot afford the interest rates under this government.'

This is, without question, bad policy. This is a particularly low point, even by the very low standards of the Labor Party—which we have come to expect. They're using catchy titles and great promises. I ask the Greens: why would you believe this round of Labor promises when they've broken every other housing promise they took to the election over a year and a half ago? This is not just bad for the entire nation; it's particularly bad for constituents in Western Australia—and I'll come back to that. The difference, as I said, between those on that side of the chamber and those on our side of the chamber when we were in government is not just about the policy, which is all—the policy and the spin—that Labor cares about. It is about good policy. It is about consulting on policy, and it is about producing the best possible legislation to deliver a positive outcome for Australians. This set of legislation will not achieve that.

The bill lacks crucial detail for Australians in a number of ways, and it fails to define key terms, including probably the three most important. Those opposite have not defined social housing. That's a bit of a surprise in legislation that they're saying will assist social housing. They haven't defined affordable housing. Again, there's no definition of social housing, no definition of affordable housing and no definition of acute housing. I cannot believe that the Greens have struck a deal with Labor on something they care so passionately about when the legislation doesn't define social housing, doesn't define affordable housing and does not define acute housing.

This fund provides no certainty as all, as disbursements for the fund will be wholly reliant on the financial performance of the fund's investment in equities and other financial products. And guess what? I say this to the Australian Greens: if the fund had been established last financial year, when Labor wanted it to be established, the Commonwealth would already have lost $370 million out of that fund, in addition to the approximately $400 million in interest on the borrowing. Therefore, these great financial managers who wanted to set up this fund would already, in less than a year, have lost approximately $770 million. That would have meant not a single dollar was available for social and affordable housing projects, which, by the way, they have not yet defined in the legislation they are guillotining through this chamber today.

Shame on them. They talk about the cost of living, about people who need assistance and about families, but, under those opposite, the facts are very, very clear. Cost-of-living pressures have worsened to crisis levels now for millions of Australians due to Labor's high inflation, declining real wages—declining real wages under Labor!—and skyrocketing energy and grocery bills. This is Labor's inflation. As to Labor's bill, I can guarantee you, if you haven't done anything in housing in the first half of your term—and I say to the Australian Greens that they will rue the day they did this deal—nothing will change and the situation will continue to go backwards.

I turn to my home state of Western Australia and what the impact of this will be in my home state. Like other senators, I have been travelling around the state and talking to people across the state and across many different communities. There is no question that Western Australians are doing it really tough, and they're struggling with cost-of-living and household crises as a result. The cost of rentals in capital cities under this government has increased by 11.7 per cent in the year to April this year. Perth is experiencing record rent increases. The median weekly rental rate has risen to over $500. Over 7,000 Western Australians are experiencing homelessness, and one in four is sleeping rough every single night. And this lot want to put the Cook Labor government in charge. They are responsible. Despite all of the rhetoric and hubris from Labor governments, federal and state, the number of people sleeping rough under the Cook government has increased by 104 per cent since Labor came to government. In fact, sadly, Western Australia has been labelled the rough-sleeping capital of Australia. And there is nothing in this bill that will change their circumstances.

Today in Western Australia there are 34,000 Western Australians on the Western Australian public housing list, which is a complete and utter disgrace, and that has increased significantly under the Cook government, which has spent billions trying to fix the problem. All they have done is put more people on the public housing waiting list for far longer. How do you figure that? They have put money into the system but they now have less public housing and more people on the list. This is the crowd that those opposite want to put in charge or give the money to, to make the situation worse.

So for these and many other reasons, we will not be supporting these bills. It is a cruel hoax on all Australians who so desperately need support to be able to afford to rent their homes, to take out a mortgage or to keep their mortgage. This will not do any of it. It will cost federal taxpayers over $10 billion. I guess we have to thank the Greens for delaying this bill because the taxpayer would have lost over $770 million simply by having this fund. What more is it going to cost? So, again, I'm sorry to say this to the Australian Greens but you have been sold a hoax and you will be standing here shortly saying you and all Australians have been gaslit.

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

Right now in this country there is a housing crisis unfolding. Over 100,000 Australians spent last census night without anywhere to call home, not a safe place, not a place for shelter, nothing permanent, nothing to build your life on—100,000 Australians. Tonight, 9,000 Western Australians will experience a form of homelessness, 12 per cent of them under the age of 12. It is unacceptable that in a wealthy country like Australia so many have to go without a basic human right like housing while others are enabled by decisions made in places like this to hoard housing as a commodity and to treat it as an investment. On average, MPs in this place own 2.5 properties. Think about the symbolism of that. While 100,000 people in Australia have nowhere to call home, the average person in this place has a house to spare. Now, when you think about that for a moment, it begins to explain why this place has overseen a massive commodification and capitalisation of what should be a human right. And make no mistake about it, housing is and has always been a fundamental human right.

Government after government has entered into policy after policy that has driven up prices, driven down availability and there has been a total unwillingness to invest in what has been so desperately needed—the building of new public and social housing at a scale that actually meets demand. Something has to give in this system. Renters are facing their harshest conditions ever, and in this country the social housing waiting list has rapidly expanded while governments—state, federal and territory—do nothing for generations that have been priced out of the housing market and totally barred from the idea of ever being able to afford a home.

In my home state the rental vacancy rate is the lowest it has been in 40 years. Prices are skyrocketing. At the current rate of investment and construction, the social and affordable housing waiting list in Western Australia will not be fulfilled until 3323 at the current rate that the Cook government is progressing that program.

This is something that I have read to the Senate a couple of times in the course of the protracted, months-long debate over this bill in both of the chambers. It still shocks me to read this sentence. In Perth, summers, as anyone from WA would know, are getting hotter and hotter. In the inner metro areas of Perth we are now regularly having 40-degree days—not once, not twice, not as an aberration, but again and again. Not only is this forcing people to attempt to cool down to stay healthy; it's actually forcing people to survive. These are people with roofs over their heads, people who have been lucky enough to scrape together the money, maybe with their friends or their families, to rent a place, yet the landlord refuses to put an air-conditioner in or to make the place in any way sealed, so on a 43-degree day you are forced inside in a place with a tin roof. In the middle of our city, last year alone, renters paid out an extra $5 billion thanks to greedy rent hikes. So on the one hand you've got people trying to survive in their own home and avoid heatstroke, while on the other side you've got people making $5 billion by jacking up the rent.

You would think that the Albanese government, which claims to be progressive, would aim to do something about one of the biggest issues facing Australians today. Instead, their housing plan will actually see the housing crisis in this country deteriorate. It will actually see the situation get worse. What they have given to the community amounts to a single glass of water in a drought. Let's be really open-eyed and honest about what is passing the Senate tonight. It is not a piece of legislation that will do everything that is needed to solve the housing crisis. It is not something that will do half of what is needed to solve the housing crisis in this country. In the context of what people are facing in WA, it amounts to little better than a glassful of water in the middle a drought.

And yet we sit here tonight with that glass at least somewhat reasonably full because the Greens have continued to campaign and push. I am proud that, thanks to community pressure and the relentlessness of campaigners across the country getting out into communities, doorknocking, having conversations, activating their networks, engaging in real grassroots democracy and real grassroots campaigning, we have been able to extract from this government—kicking, screaming and moaning the entire time, as they have—an additional $3 billion in public funding for public and social housing. That is a great achievement, and it falls to every single Green in this place to put the celebration and acknowledgement for that achievement exactly where it belongs—in the hands and the hearts of every single volunteer who joined in our months-long campaign to get that outcome for people, to actually start the work of fixing the problem.

I must be very transparent with the Senate tonight. In the course of this negotiation, in the course of the campaign, I had hoped—I really had hoped—that, with enough opportunity presented to the Albanese government, they would see the reality and the writing on the wall which is the rental crisis in Australia, that after a couple of weeks or a couple of months of a half-hearted resistance to the idea of something as basic and simple as capping rent increases they would join with the Greens in pursuing that reform, particularly as nations such as Germany took up the opportunity. I perhaps had a naive hope that somebody in the government would connect the need to help renters stay in affordable homes with the flow-through impact it would have on a chance of actually clearing the social housing waiting lists in this country. Once you're kicked out of your home because you can't afford the rent, where do you go? You go onto the waiting list that already are locked up for years, because we have structurally underinvested in public housing in Australia for so long.

Yet in negotiation meeting after negotiation meeting they refused to hear the voices of Australian renters as they called out for action and support. Worse than that, they put into the world these ridiculous ideas that the federal government—the poor, helpless federal government!—could never do anything to persuade the big bad state and territory governments to implement a rent freeze or capping process, as though the community hadn't watched them do exactly the same thing on energy prices just before Christmas, as though the community hadn't lived through the reality of the federal government leading that response during the COVID pandemic, as though the Australian community doesn't know, particularly the WA community, that when the Commonwealth wants to get something done it gets the states and territories in a room and it gets it done, particularly when every state on the mainland has a premier or state minister or chief minister from the government's very own party.

It was an absolutely ridiculous notion then. It is an absolutely ridiculous notion now. The Greens will continue to use every single opportunity given to us in this space to push the federal government to do what renters need—to freeze rents, to make unlimited rent increases illegal. Nobody should be able to endlessly jack up the price of somebody's month-to-month home. That is totally unacceptable. We will take every legislative opportunity in this place to do that. And I will tell you this is well: we will take every opportunity in the other legislated spaces in which we are present to force the state and territory governments to act.

There are many campaigners this evening who I'm sure are gearing up right now for the next stage of this housing campaign, of this campaign to see rents frozen. I am very excited to see, at the local government level in WA, the Greens putting forward two fantastic candidates in Sophie Greer for the south ward of Vincent and Isabella Tripp for the Perth City Council. I look forward to that moment on 21 October when we elect Sophie to the south ward of Vincent as an openly Green candidate, running on the platform of action for the housing crisis, in the backyard of the WA housing minister. That will get a bit of movement and a bit of conversation in the WA parliament for sure. We will continue to use every legislative and campaign mechanism to get this done for people.

I also want to acknowledge tonight that as part of this negotiation with the government the Greens have succeeded, again, in bringing to their attention something that should have been plainly obvious to begin with—the idea that every home built under this government program should be built to a high-access standard. We have achieved that outcome, so every home built will be built with some basic disability access principles in place. It will have step-free paths of travel from the street to the entrance and to parking areas; wider internal doors and corridors; toilet entry on a ground-floor level; a bathroom that contains a hobless shower; reinforced walls around the toilet; shower supports; and grab rails so that people can navigate their spaces safely.

It seems strange that I would even have to step this out for a federal government, but, when the federal Labor Party brought this bill to the parliament, they had a commitment to accessible housing that had a nice little carve-out for them. It said they would build accessible homes 'where possible'—where possible! And the Greens said: 'Not good enough. If you're going to invest this public money, you will build universally accessible homes.' We have achieved that outcome for the community, and I am very proud of that. On that basis, I will be withdrawing my second reading amendment on sheet 1962, relating to accessible housing.

To all the housing campaigners that are listening to this debate tonight: thank you for your energy, your enthusiasm and your commitment. Together, we took on an intransigent, corporate owned government and extracted $3 billion and vital changes to the program, and we will continue until rents are frozen and affordable. (Time expired)

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

tor SHELDON () (): I will start by addressing some of the comments that Senator Reynolds made earlier, because I find it amazing that someone can come into this place and say that Labor has bad policies on affordable housing because we don't have enough houses, then go on to say the government won't meet the deadline on the number of houses that need to be built, and then say, 'I'm going to vote for no houses being built.' It is an extraordinary debating point, but it also goes to the heart of the DNA of those opposite, and I'm going to touch on that in my speech. They don't have alternatives about investing in housing, but they do have an alternative view when it comes to superannuation and housing, and I'll get to that point in a moment.

The Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and related bills will deliver on the Albanese government's commitment to all Australians to take swift and decisive action on housing affordability. We find ourselves in this situation because of a decade of failed policy and outright inaction from those opposite. Now they come in here to try to stop our government getting on with building 30,000 social and affordable homes, but we shouldn't be surprised, because for a decade they did nothing on rising energy prices—well, they delivered the national energy price guarantee. For a decade they did nothing about the cost of living, while we've delivered a suite of cost-of-living measures. For a decade they did nothing about record low wages, while we've delivered the single biggest rise to the minimum wage in decades, which they opposed. Like these issues, the housing crisis has been driven by the inaction, incompetence and indifference of those opposite.

Since coming to office, we've shown that our government's legislative agenda is about delivering for Australians, which is exactly what we're doing by establishing the Housing Australia Future Fund. Labor is about delivering. The Liberals and Nations, put simply, are the 'no-alition'. There's nothing Mr Dutton and those opposite have seen that they don't want to say no to. Clearly, 'no' is their favourite word.

We will not forget that this legislation could have been passed months ago. We could have had had contracts signed, foundations being laid and homes being constructed. Instead, here we are in the Senate talking about it instead of acting, because of the long-running obstruction by those opposite. It's in their DNA to disregard the need for social and affordable housing. You only need to look at my home state of New South Wales, listen to Senator Reynolds and watch which way they'll vote on the opposite side. But in New South Wales, during their 12 long years in office, the Liberal-National government sold off 4,205 social housing properties across the state. That's $3.5 billion worth of social housing that the community desperately needs right now.

Instead, we're left in the current crisis due to the lack of investment and outright lack of care from those opposite. But let's look past the sheer hypocrisy of the National Party, who represents some of the poorest communities, as stated by the former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce himself. He said: 'In the National Party, we've got the poorest seats. The richest people are represented by the Greens, then the Libs'. The same party then walk into the Senate chamber and vote against 30,000 homes for the most vulnerable Australians, their own constituents. It's pretty evident that the reason regional communities are suffering is that they've been represented for 103 years by people who vote against the interests of their own communities, and right now we are at crunch point.

Australians are struggling, and now we need to build more social and affordable houses. The Australian Council of Social Service Chief Executive Officer, Cassandra Goldie, said: 'The financial pressures associated with keeping a roof over your head are becoming far more widespread than we've seen in the past.' Those opposite support low pay. Their anti-worker, anti-union agenda has put us in this crisis, and they're obstructing us in our efforts to fix their mess. This is a crisis created by them, and they should hang their heads in shame.

These bills establish the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund. The fund will make annual disbursements of at least $500 million a year to finance the construction of new homes. In the first five years of the fund, that means the construction of 20,000 social homes, 4,000 of which will be reserved for women and children leaving domestic and family violence and older women on lower incomes who are at risk of homelessness. On top of those 20,000 social homes, it will also fund 10,000 affordable homes for frontline workers like police, allied health workers, nurses and cleaners—the people who are providing the most essential services in our community but increasingly cannot even afford to live in these communities.

So, combined, this bill will see 30,000 social and affordable homes built in the next five years. That's what those opposite will be voting against. Let's be very clear: that's 30,000 social and affordable homes over the next five years—homes for victims of domestic violence and homes for essential workers priced out of their own communities—and those opposite are going to vote against it.

The fund will also provide $200 million for the repair, maintenance and improvements of housing in remote Indigenous communities. Unlike those opposite, we don't seek to use these communities as a political football. They say they want action, and we're taking action for Indigenous communities. They talk about action. Here is your chance to turn around and vote for action. As always, just like the Indigenous communities you've abandoned, you've also abandoned social and affordable housing. We put our money where our mouth is, including with this bill today.

The bill also provides $100 million for crisis and transitional housing options for those leaving family and domestic violence. Again, it's remarkable the 'no-alition' is voting against that. There is also $30 million to build housing and fund special services for veterans experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness. So the 'no-alition' is voting against specialist services for veterans experiencing homelessness too. How low can you get—how out of touch and how disrespectful to the people in our community?

So, taken altogether, the measures in this bill represent a substantial yet targeted investment in housing for those who are most in need. It provides targeted support for essential workers, those experiencing domestic violence, veterans and remote Indigenous communities. Currently, more than 122,000 people are experiencing homelessness, including over 17,600 children younger than 12 years, a truly heartbreaking figure.

But these aren't just numbers on a page. They are real people: neighbours, sons and daughters, mums and dads, aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas. This fund will go a long way in supporting these families and ensuring that they have and maintain a safe and secure roof over their heads, because we know that ensuring people have a secure roof over their heads leads to greater outcomes. It allows people greater opportunities to study and learn, find and maintain work and provide for their families. It gives people a chance to build their lives in the middle class and to come into the middle class. These bills are about supporting people like former IT worker Lee, who became homeless after losing his job due to mental health problems, or former academic James, who had a relationship breakdown and was forced onto the streets due to the shortage of available homes. Our Housing Australia Future Fund is fundamentally about supporting struggling Australians and helping them into a safe and secure home and to get back on their feet.

Of course, these bills are just part of the Albanese government's broader housing reform agenda. There's the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee, which, having been launched back in October, has already helped more than 1,600 people in regional Australia to get into their first homes. There's also the National Housing Accord with state and territory governments, local governments, institutional investors and the building sector, which aims to build one million homes over the five years from 2024. That is a remarkably ambitious target that requires the Commonwealth, states, territories and local government to work cohesively together. When you remember the antagonistic relationship the Morrison government had with state governments, it's clear this accord could only ever have been delivered by a federal Labor government.

The Minister for Housing is also working through a new National Housing and Homelessness plan, to begin from next year. I want to commend the minister for the announcement that the Albanese government is delivering a $67.5 million funding boost for homelessness services. Homelessness funding, like much of the funding in the Morrison government's last budget, was scheduled to end at the end of last financial year—to fall off a cliff. Under the Morrison government's budget, there was going to be a massive funding cut for homelessness services across the country during a housing crisis. I thank the minister for delivering on that funding. I particularly commend the Australian Services Union and their members and service providers for campaigning for that funding. Frankly, the amount of funding that the Morrison government's budget had scheduled to end at the end of this financial year is unbelievable. This isn't the only area where the Morrison government created a funding cliff where the Albanese Labor government has had to step in and ensure the continuation of funding rather than potentially losing vital services in the sector. It would appear that the depth of cuts they were planning to all sorts of essential services, including homelessness services, would have made even former Treasurer Joe Hockey blush. Unlike those opposite, we know that homelessness services and proper investment in housing supply are essential.

That brings me to one of the most underrated debacles the Morrison government inflicted upon the Australian people. I'm talking, of course, about the Morrison government's super for housing policy. Super for housing is a policy that is so utterly ridiculous that it was a shock to see the Leader of the Opposition recommit to that policy last year. This is the only idea that those opposite have to deal with the housing crisis. It's a laughably bad idea. You don't have to take my word for it at all. Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull described super for housing as 'the craziest idea I've heard'. Former Liberal finance minister Mathias Cormann said:

Increasing the amount of money going into real estate by facilitating access to super savings pre-retirement will not improve housing affordability. It would increase demand for housing and … would actually drive up house prices by more.

You don't even need to listen to former Liberal leaders. You can listen to the current Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, Sussan Ley, who said in 2017:

Young people need their super for retirement, not to try to take pressure off an urban housing bubble …

The Liberals and Nationals' policy idea is so absurd that many in their own party hate it. Even the deputy leader hates it. Even they know that super for housing isn't a policy about housing affordability. It's just another way for Senator Bragg and his mates in the extreme neoliberal wing of the Liberal Party to attack our super system.

While the opposition leader grandstands with grand ideas on housing affordability and reheats the Morrison government's ridiculous super for housing policy, because they hate the prospect of Australians being able to retire in a decent and comfortable manner, we on this side are investing billions in building 30,000 social and affordable homes over the next five years. While those opposite side with their real estate agent mates, those sitting on the top floors of tall buildings in capital cities, ensuring that their already outrageously large profit margins get even bigger, we on this side are investing in housing for those leaving family and domestic violence, veterans, essential workers and remote Indigenous communities. We on this side are working with all levels of government and are aiming to build one million homes in five years because, unlike those opposite, we aren't playing politics with the housing crisis; we're trying to fix it.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 and related bills. The coalition does not support these bills, and not for the reasons Senator Sheldon just outlined. We support social housing. We want to see more social housing. We want to see the federal and state governments do more to address this issue. We just don't believe that this fund is the way to deliver it. I dare say that it won't deliver the ambitious targets they are saying it will deliver.

This is deeply flawed legislation. It contains very little oversight on how the fund will be distributed and whether the funds will be allocated for their intended purpose and not for some other housing nirvana that the government dreams up. This will be funded by Commonwealth borrowing. It will cost the Commonwealth—and the taxpayer—approximately $400 million per annum in interest servicing costs on debt, based on the 10-year government bond rate of four per cent. Very simply, this is going to add to national debt.

This legislation lacks crucial details and, therefore, deserves proper scrutiny. When it comes to legislating what we've seen with this government is a lack of detail and, on scrutiny, the lack of detail is proving to be the standard operating procedure of this government. What will the impact be on inflation? That's a good question about this legislation and fund that's going to be established. What analysis has Treasury undertaken on the broader economic impacts? We know the answer to that is that this government has not done proper analysis of this. Treasury hasn't got figures on the broader economic impact on inflation. We don't know accurately, because this government hasn't done that. So we have a situation where the government wants to put the housing industry on steroids and Treasury has not done any modelling on the upward inflationary pressures that it may cause the broader economy in an economic environment where the Reserve Bank has had to raise interest rates 11 times since this government's election, to combat growing inflation, while this government wanders around setting inflation on fire with half-baked ideas, like this housing policy.

Where will the labour and materials come from to meet these aspirations? There's nothing in these bills to address those very serious issues. There's nothing that the government have even announced that they are doing to address these very serious issues.

In my state of Western Australia we've seen a recent spate of companies associated with the building and construction industry going under. Only last month another two building companies went into liquidation, joining a long list of companies that have collapsed in recent times. ASIC insolvency statistics show that more than 2,200 building companies collapsed during the 2022-23 fiscal year, and that was a 72 per cent increase on the previous 12-month period. Ironically, just today the West Australian reported that as many as 21,200 houses are under construction in WA in March 2023. They spoke to the customers of one particular builder, some who had signed contracts to build in 2020 and in 2021 and had still not received the keys to their brand-new home, such is the backlog of construction projects and the skills, labour and materials shortages. This is affecting not just Western Australia; this is happening right across the country.

One has only to look at the Western Australian government's own website, as I did, to see the difficulty anyone has in undertaking a home build. The Western Australian website for the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety says:

The current, Australia-wide shortage of building materials and skilled trades is impacting the residential construction industry in Western Australia.

Supply of building materials has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and increased building activity following the State and Federal stimulus grants. It has impacted everyone in the supply chain, from manufacturers and suppliers to contractors, subcontractors and home owners. There is also a genuine labour shortage.

While this can be frustrating for all involved it's important to understand the current market and be aware of likely delays, outside of builders' control.

Yet, while the industry can't even meet existing demand, the Labor-Greens alliance want to further supercharge the market with its outlandish ambitions when the current market cannot even meet the demand that's before it—the work that it already has in its pipeline. Instead those on the other side want to give false hope to people who are in desperate need of social or affordable housing. They're giving false hope.

That's what this government is trending to be. They're just all about putting up this mirage rather than actually delivering. They said they were going to increase wages. We know that real wages are going backwards. They talk about wages but don't actually mention the impact of inflation, which, of course, is the real wage figure. They're just putting up mirages all the way around. Tonight the AFR is reporting:

A dysfunctional planning system and huge labour shortage will cripple the Albanese government's target of 1.2 million new homes in the next five years …

Nigel Satterley, the prominent West Australian developer, said only half of those homes would be finished—between 600,000 and 650,000, "if we're lucky"—because of a lack of workers to build them.

We know that it's not bureaucrats or the government that's going to build houses; it's going to be workers. It's the industry that is building houses. It's not government that builds houses; it's the business sector, and the industry can only build a certain volume according to the skills, labour and materials that are on offer to them. The Housing Industry Association recently said they believe that these are the worst conditions that the construction industry has faced since the energy crisis in the mid-1970s. And what's this government doing about that? Nothing. Supercharging this issue is only going to create a bigger problem, and they're not addressing the fundamental issues of supply of labour, of supply of materials that can go into building homes. If they did that then maybe we'd actually solve some of the housing crisis situations that we have across this country.

Dimitri Burshtein in the Australian made these observations on 3 May 2023 in an article entitled 'Housing fund just another storm waiting to happen'. He said:

In pursuing its housing plan, the government has announced it intends to establish the Housing Australia Future Fund. The HAFF would borrow $10 billion to give to the Future Fund to invest on its behalf. The investment returns on this $10 billion, to an annual limit of $500 million, would then be used to support new social and affordable housing. Whether federal investment in the provision of social and affordable housing is an appropriate policy or sufficient priority is a valid debate to be had. But pretending—

this is the kicker—

that such a policy can be financed without cost or risk to the budget or taxpayers is an invitation to economic calamity. If public finance were as simple as government borrowing money to invest so that returns can be spent, why not borrow $10 trillion to invest and eliminate most taxes?

We know that that's ridiculous. He goes on to say:

The economic arithmetic behind the HAFF appears questionable from the start.

I concur with those remarks. It isn't just that the economic maths are questionable: this government is actually playing a roulette game with this fund. It's hoping it fixes the problem, while hoping it doesn't create any further inflationary pressures.

Apart from this, incredibly, this bill also prescribes—and this goes to the point about the lack of transparency of this government—a-five year time frame for review, which, given what's at stake here, is wholly unsatisfactory. There's nothing like kicking the can of accountability down the road for someone else to worry about. It will be five years before we actually see whether or not this act is going to have its impact or whether it's indeed meeting its objectives. Unsurprisingly, stakeholders requested a much shorter period for review to ensure that the proposed grants from the fund are meeting their intended purpose. A shorter review period would actually be really sensible. It isn't actually that much to ask for. It's practical, and yet this government is not doing that.

Predictably, some economists have said this bill would do little in making inroads into the very real and serious issues of housing shortages. AMP chief economist, Shane Oliver, is quoted in the media as describing the government's housing fund plan as 'a drop in the ocean' in meeting the shortfall of housing demand. According to media reports, he said:

The main problem is shortfalls of materials and particular shortages of workers. Right now, we're having trouble trying to build something like 165,000 dwellings a year. The reality is we need at least 220,000 to keep up with the underlying demand. It's all pie in the sky if we don't have the means to build them.

I concur with those comments also.

Other than blaming us for their sloppy bill and treating the Senate with disrespect, what is this government's underlying motive here with this bill? This bill provides great political insight into the progress, or lack of it, of this government. It was back in May that the Prime Minister was first threatening to use this bill as a weapon for a double dissolution election. Remember that? Having overplayed his hand at the time, the Prime Minister realised he had no political hand left to play. Now this government just needs a political win—any win is what they're after! It's evidently clear that the Prime Minister now knows that his political capital is disappearing before his eyes. His government is in trouble with the Voice referendum; they're in trouble with their radical industrial relations bill and their meddling in the aviation sector; and their competition review has been torpedoed even before it started because the Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer are at odds with each other over what's to be included. And that's beside rampant inflation and the higher cost-of-living pressures faced by everyday Australian families.

This government desperately needs a win, so they sold out and did a deal with the Greens to saddle Australia up with the utopian pie that is this bill. And they'll be held accountable for the progress, or, I would say, lack of progress, when it comes to delivering on this policy. They'll be held accountable on the number of homes that will be built next year. We'll measure it; we'll stand up here and measure how many homes you've actually built. Then the year after that, we'll also check and see how many—right up to the fifth year, when your final report comes in, we'll see how many homes you've actually built. We know that you're not going to meet your objectives, because you're not dealing with the fundamental issues; you're just putting some fairy floss out there. Guess what? It evaporates as soon as you put it in your mouth, and that's what Australians are going to find when they're looking for a home—when they're looking for somewhere to have a roof over their head. They'll see that you haven't delivered, because it's just evaporating. It's evaporating before their eyes because this government won't deliver it. You'll try to duck and weave, and to blame others. But, guess what? This is your bill, and it will be your act that you're delivering with the Greens, and you won't be able to blame anyone but yourselves when you don't deliver on this project.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023. At the outset, I want to commend the work that the member for Griffith has done over months and months on this bill in building pressure on the government. We call him the member for Griffith in this place, but he was referred to last week as 'that bloke Max from Queensland who has really got under the Prime Minister's skin'. I think that would be a fair summary of the campaign that's been run by him, his team, the Greens in this place and the thousands and thousands of Australians across this country who've knocked on doors, sent emails to their politicians, talked to their neighbours, talked to their friends and demanded more than what Labor first put on the table with this HAFF bill.

We should be clear about one thing: the bill that was first introduced by Labor was a shocker. It wasn't going to even touch the sides of the national housing crisis. The original plan from Labor was literally to borrow $10 billion and then invest it in everything other than housing. They were going to borrow $10 billion, whack it on the stock market and then roll the dice for the tens and tens of thousands of people in the queues for public housing—for the millions of Australians in housing crisis. They were going to roll the dice on the stock exchange and, if the stock exchange gave a positive return, then some of that might have been spent on housing. But if it gave a negative return, then not $1 would be spent on this national housing crisis. That was Labor's first draft of the HAFF bill, and of course we weren't going to support that—of course we weren't going to vote that through.

Nobody—except, maybe, the coalition—ever says about education expenditure that you should only invest in education if you borrow some money, whack it on the stock market and it gives a positive return. We don't fund public hospitals by gambling borrowed money on the stock market, so of course we shouldn't be dealing with a housing crisis that way. So we said no, and we said, with the support of millions of Australians, that there's a housing crisis and that you need to do better. Lift the game; give a guaranteed investment of serious money for public housing, and then address the rental crisis that's also gripping the country.

For months and months, we got told by Labor that the Prime Minister has no power to address rents, that the Prime Minister is powerless. He'd love to help but just doesn't have the constitutional power. This is the same Prime Minister who, at the end of last year, convened a national crisis meeting to cap energy prices. He had the power to convene a meeting of the National Cabinet to cap energy prices. We rushed in here, quite rightly, before Christmas to pass emergency legislation to cap energy prices. But suddenly, when it came to taking on the property industry and the developers, Prime Minister Albanese said: 'I have no power. I can't do it—can't touch it. It's all too hard. We have to leave it to the states and territories.' It's not good enough from the Prime Minister in the face of a national crisis to just put your hands up and say that you haven't got the power.

The pressure grew for more funding for public housing—not just for a gambled return on the stock market but for guaranteed funding. We're here today, as Greens, backing in this bill because that pressure has worked. It's confirmation that having the numbers in this place for the balance of power, combined with the support of the millions of Australians who are demanding that their government step up and sort out the housing crisis, works. It delivers on what the community needs. We have the backing of that grassroots movement, where we get out there, knock on doors and talk to people one-on-one about how there should be far more hope in politics and how the Prime Minister should actually get out and do stuff, not put his hands up and surrender to the property developers and the market. When you speak face-to-face with people who are doing it tough, you hear their demands. We tell them, 'Actually, politics can make a difference.'

And it has made a difference, because we've now secured $3 billion of upfront spending on public housing—$3 billion! We secured $2 billion just at the start of this financial year. Prime Minister Albanese said, 'Oh, that should be enough to get the Greens across the line.' We said: 'It's not enough. It doesn't address the scale of the crisis.' We said: 'There needs to be guaranteed funding every year. Don't gamble it on the stock market. There needs to be guaranteed funding every year and more funds for public housing. And what about the rental crisis?' And then, just in the last week, we've nailed that extra billion dollars for public housing—not in 2024 or 2025 or 2028, but an extra billion right now to build homes for people who can't afford the rent and to get people off those public waiting lists that people literally die on while waiting for a home. That is $3 billion in direct investment in social, public and affordable housing because we said no to a crap deal and no to the rubbish initial draft of the HAFF, and we said it together with thousands and thousands of Australians.

There's often a sense amongst political insiders that Labor should just be allowed to deliver their proposals unchanged as if they have some sort of unique mandate. They received just a tick over a third of the popular vote, but somehow Labor come in with their puffed-up arrogance and say that they're the only ones that can be trusted on progressive legislation, and then they deliver something like the HAFF Bill, which is a gamble on the stock market and not a serious attack on a national crisis. We're told by some of those political insiders that we should just pass whatever Labor has put on the table because it won't get any better and, if we don't accept their initial crappy offer, it will all be taken off the table. What rubbish that proved to be! Today, as we vote through this bill, having secured an extra $3 billion in upfront funding and having guaranteed at least $500 million every year going forward, taking the gamble on the stock market out of this bill, it proves that that political analysis of holding Labor to account and doing it with millions of Australians on your side actually works.

To the renters out there, who I'm sure are still deeply disappointed by a prime minister who says that he's powerless and by a bill that's not addressing the rental crisis, we say that we know it's still too hard, and we know that we shouldn't live in a country where unlimited rent increases are legal. We'll keep fighting. This is not a one-bill campaign. As long as the housing crisis continues, the Greens will continue this work. That bloke Max from Queensland will continue this work with the support of all my colleagues in this place and the other place and with the support of millions of Australians behind us. We've seen just how hard it is to drag Labor to the left to do the right, progressive thing—to put the money up to start addressing some of the serious social and environmental crises we have in this country. But we've seen that that pressure works, and we're committed to keeping that pressure up for renters too.

So we're here at what I think is a critical point in politics on this. It's interesting to hear the coalition's attack on this final package. The coalition's attack is that we shouldn't give any hope to people on public housing lists and that we shouldn't give any hope to renters because, if we put any money into the actual construction of public housing, we're somehow going to create inflationary pressures and supply constraints. They say that we shouldn't do anything because it's all too hard. 'Don't interfere with the market; let the market magically fix it for renters and people who don't have a home and are couch surfing and living in their car. Let the market decide!' It's one of the most cruel analyses that I've ever seen—to say to a family that's living in a car: 'We can't help you. Just let the market decide.' That's the coalition's solution: 'The dead hand of the market may at some point construct something in the future, and we're not going to lift a hand to build public housing or support affordable housing.' That is like political cruelty distilled by the coalition, utter base political cruelty. To let people in a country as wealthy as Australia go without a home because of your ideological commitment to the market or maybe because of cosy relationship with the property industry that you don't want to get in the way of is just plain cruel.

We live in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet and we have a per capita wealth now that is a multiple of what we had in the forties, fifties and sixties, when everyone in this country had a home. We had a federal government then that said, 'If the market is not building people's homes, we will.' They built public homes in suburbs in my hometown of Sydney. Whole suburbs were constructed by public funding in the forties, fifties and sixties to give people not just some shoebox in an apartment but homes that they still want to live in now, decent homes, secure homes. We did that when we had a fraction of the wealth that we do now.

We did that in large part through major investment from the Commonwealth government. But now we have had this ideological takeover by the Labor Party. They say that, without pressure from the Greens and the community, their only method of putting money into public housing is to gamble it through the stock market. What went wrong with Labor in the last 60 years? They went from direct investment and building public housing on a nationwide scale, where there was a commitment to giving everyone who needed it a home to their initial draft of the HAFF bill, where they would roll the money on the stock market. What went wrong? It's part of the ideological takeover in this place. There is a resistance to seeing the federal government act on a national crisis and invest in public assets for the public good, because that is the ultimate solution for housing.

Yes, let's get the bill passed. Let's see $3 billion freed up this year to build a surge of public and affordable housing but then let's commit together as a parliament not to hand over to some cruel market ideology people's homes and the security for their family but invest in public housing with public money, with the wealth that only this parliament can give to a key national crisis. And while we're building those homes, let's build that national consensus to put caps on rentals, to make it illegal to have unlimited rent increases and to build the spanners from both sides so that a decade from now we can look back on this moment and say, 'That is when politics changed. It was 2023 when we took away from that 20, 30 years of ideological attack on public housing and the public services. From 2023 we changed politics so that everyone in this country, every family, every mum, dad and kid had a safe home.'

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

AROL BROWN (—) (): Anyone listening to this debate here today would have finally realised exactly where the coalition stand on housing in Australia. This is a coalition that has never invested in any real, meaningful way in social housing—not interested, in social housing. If you were to listen to the contributions of the Greens political party here tonight you would realise that this is about the politics. This is about where they can get votes. That is what it is about because the last contribution we just heard talked about the Labor Party and about houses that were built in the forties, fifties and sixties. I grew up in social housing, or government housing as it was known in Tasmania, all my life and my mother lived there all her life. The Labor Party has never lost sight of the need to build social housing, to support affordable housing. We have also never lost sight of the need to support people in various forms of housing, including renters. Over the last few months, the Greens political party have been campaigning for votes, not for homes—not for houses.

In front of us here today—I'm proud to say it's finally here today, and to speak on the Housing Australia Future Fund—is a bill after a decade of inaction from those opposite. They really should hang their heads in shame. This is a bill and a whole raft of measures that are supported by stakeholder housing experts—those opposite know that—by community housing providers, Homelessness Australia, ACOSS and state and territory ministers, including the Tasmanian Liberal government. They support these initiatives.

What we have here is the single biggest investment in social and affordable housing in more than a decade. I'm so proud to be a part of the Albanese Labor government that is delivering these initiatives and this particular bill. I commend the minister, Julie Collins, the member for Franklin in my home state of Tasmania, for the work that she has put in to deliver this bill and also the other raft of initiatives that will deliver homes to vulnerable people. On the Labor side, we know that far too many Australians are struggling to access a safe and affordable place to call home. Secure, safe housing isn't the reality for so many.

Under the former government, as I've already indicated, the situation went from bad to worse. In my home state of Tasmania, there's been a 44.8 per cent increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness. I've never experienced homelessness, and I can only imagine how difficult it would be. But I was brought up in an area where, for various reasons, many of my neighbours and friends did experience homelessness. It was only the housing programs of the then Labor government that turned some of that around. But, as I said, there's been a 44.8 per cent increase in the number of people in Tasmania experiencing homelessness and, for some, housing isn't even an option that's accessible to them. With more than 100,000 people, including more than 2,300 Tasmanians, experiencing the rawest form of homelessness—sleeping rough, in tents, in cars or without any shelter at all—the job of tackling the housing crisis is urgent. Because of this bill, in the next five years 30,000 Australians and their families will have a place to call home. That's what the bill seeks to do. And what do we get from other side? We get a contribution talking about counting, 'We're going to do this and we're going to doing to do that.' There's no support for this bill—no support for a bill that will, in the next five years, deliver 30,000 Australians and their families are place to call home. No, not at all. With a commitment of 1,200 homes in each state and territory, many people all over the country will benefit from the fund. Because of this bill in front of us, at least 1,200 new homes will be built right where we need them in Tasmania. The fund will generate returns over the long term, which will provide annual disbursements to deliver a secure pipeline of funding for social and affordable housing in Australia, and that's very important. It's important that we have a secure pipeline of funding.

I thank those senators from the Labor side who have made thoughtful and consistent contributions to the debate on this bill. But it seems the not-so-subtle strategy of the coalition is to say no to everything. It's good to see that the Greens political party, after many months of playing politics with people's lives and building houses, have finally come to their senses and realised the government's plan all along was a policy that will address our housing crisis. The need for housing has been patently obvious, but instead of setting aside politics and focusing on the desperate need for housing across Australia, the Greens have strung it out. It has been a bit rich for the party that consistently called on the former government to increase the supply of housing to stand in the way of the Albanese Labor government's plan for more homes. The Greens political party accept the fact that we are in a housing crisis—a good start. They accept the fact that we need to build more housing—good. The Greens political party seems to have forgotten that it is a simple correlation between increase of the housing supply and the reduction of rent. When there is more supply in the market, there is more competition. It's pretty simple, really. This correlation between housing and supply isn't a complicated equation to understand, and after far too many months it seems the Greens political party have finally understood it. Put simply, the answer to rental stress at the national level is a sustained boost to the supply of homes to rent and a substantial investment in new and affordable homes. Does that make sense? Because it is sense.

The Housing Australia Future Fund is just one policy on the Albanese Labor government's agenda which has been put forward by Minister Julie Collins. We know it's an ambitious housing reform agenda, but it includes: a $3 billion new homes bonus; a $500 million housing support program; a new $2 billion social housing accelerator to deliver thousands of new social homes across Australia; a national housing accord, which includes federal funding to deliver 10,000 homes over five years from 2024, to be matched by up to another 10,000 by states and territories; an increase in the maximum rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance by 15 per cent—the largest increase in 30 years; an additional $2 billion in financing for more social and affordable rental housing through the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation; new incentives to boost supply of rental housing by changing arrangements for investments in build-to-rent accommodation; a $1.5 billion one-year extension of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement with states and territories, including a $67.5 billion boost to homelessness funding over the next year; and a state and territory commitment to introducing a better deal for renters—a nationally consistent policy to require, among other things, genuine reasonable grounds for eviction. The fund will put an end to Australian housing programs that have made problems worse instead of better. The fund will change lives. The Greens political party were willing to hold homes for so many to ransom in the guise of perfection. But really, the record on policy and delivery has been tainted by the unnecessary games they play. Their record is one of pushing back on development in our cities and in many of our suburban areas. It was disappointing that the Greens political party chose politics over building homes and causing unnecessary delays with getting on with the job.

We all agree what needs to happen—building homes. But the coalition, I have heard through these contributions, are still planning to vote against, again, 30,000 new social and affordable homes. I think it is important to remind the coalition of those who are supportive of the Housing Australia Future Fund, the housing experts, you know, the people you used to listen to—community housing providers, housing ministers and, as I've said before, the Tasmanian Liberal Premier. The people working day in and day out on the frontline of the housing crisis, the people see the impact of dwindling housing supply they are the people that support this bill and the other initiatives that I have outlined. They all support the Housing Australia Future Fund, so the coalition are out there by themselves. But still they seem to think they are right.

You wonder: do they ever think that they should perhaps reflect when nobody is with them, when they are out on their own? Do they ever think that perhaps it is time to put the politics aside, perhaps to show the Australian community that this is not all about politics, that they have some policy position that they really want to back in, a principled position that they want to back in? Wouldn't a good principled policy position be about building 30,000 new homes? Wouldn't that be something to say to the Australian people—we supported a wonderful piece of policy that the Albanese government put up, that Minister Julie Collins put up, and that was about supporting the building of 30,000 new homes? But the coalition is a shadow of its former self. Their only position is to say no on every policy position that is brought to this chamber. I hope the Senate will support this bill.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is late at night on a Tuesday. We are here. A lot of people are a bit tired, not a lot of energy in the room, but I am buzzing. I love a good love story. Who doesn't love a good love story? We have a beautiful moment here. The Greens and the Labor Party together again is a beautiful thing to see. I'm sure, just like the great relationships in history—you know, Donald and Ivanka, Sonny and Cher, David Lee Roth and the Van Halen brothers—nothing will break this up. You can hear the love tonight, the mutual respect between both these parties talking about how great it is to be working each other again—nothing will go wrong here.

But as we look at this, let's get down to what really is happening here. It seems the Greens may be a cheaper date than they really say. We heard the talking points of $3 billion being added to housing as part of the deal but, let's face it, Labor came to the table with $2 billion of that a long time ago. So let's get down to it. The deal is a billion bucks. That's it. That is what we have sold out for—a billion bucks. They were already doing $2 billion of that themselves, but we got $1 billion. Let's not tell anyone that is what we sold out for. We got three, that is a story and I don't want to disrupt that. That is the price we've got. That is where we're going here.

But what do we get for the rest of it? We've already heard one partner in the marriage talking about the rest being a crapshoot. The rest is what we get out of the future fund. What will we bet on? What will we get? How much money to go into this is guaranteed from that in the future? Don't get me wrong, we get the need; everybody is standing up and talking about those doing it rough, those not in beds tonight—those around the world. We understand that. There's a great power out there which is ready to build more houses: private enterprise. Take the reins off these guys and they will get that to you—

An honourable senator: Urgh!

I heard an 'urgh'! I think that could almost be unparliamentary! Let's get down to the property developers. The Greens over there in that corner have done everything they possibly could there. There will be people in council meetings across Australia today who see a development application and say, 'No, you can't build that block, or those units, because there's a cross-eyed cockroach or a left-handed dandelion somewhere near it!' These are the things that go on.

The greatest threat to housing is supply, and I get that; that's why we have to build new homes. But the money here tonight won't build new homes. There will be a two-year planning period while they um and ah. This is what's going to go on, because of the people in that corner over there. The same people who are saying that we need lower rents, or that we need this or that, are the ones who are out there saying that we can't build it! That's the truth of the situation. When I was going through the bill, I was afraid that this new money—the $3 billion that they managed to get—might actually just go into replacing stuff which had already been DA approved to get some quick results. But tonight I saw that requirement for 100 per cent accessible buildings. This is all new DA stuff which will have to be planned and lodged. They'll have to do all this. Nothing here tonight will be built for years because of what has happened.

I'll say this: don't use property developers as a bad word. If you live in a housing development or you live in a block of units, it's the developers who got around and did it. Don't take the money from them, there's all that sort of stuff in that. But we need more of them to get out there and they need quicker approvals. The stories I'm hearing now are that getting approvals and setting aside the capital, and the holding costs of everything while still going through lodgement, sometimes costs more than the raw land itself. It's taking longer and doing it is longer. We've made it so hard to build houses that people aren't building houses. It isn't hard to understand. If something is in the right zone and is a compliant development then let's get these things through.

It is supply, and these people are not bad people. They'll use their money—they'll put their risk capital in—to build the housing that this nation needs if you get out of their way. But they can't, because you know better than everyone. You know better than the people over there and you know better than the people who are putting their money up to build these things. This funding has got through. You held out for a lot more and sold a lot cheaper, but nothing will happen because of the rules that your people on the ground put around development and around all of the things that need to happen.

Australia is not a country that lacks land; we've got a tonne of it for our population. If we look at Canada, it has a lot of land. And across the border from Canada is America, where you can get the same house, five minutes drive away, for half the price. Why? Because they allow development and because they allow free enterprise to get on with the job. The answers that we have at the federal level don't get down to the state; I get that, and I respect the Constitution and the separation of powers. I respect that we can do what we can here, and I think it's a good situation. What the government can do with the infrastructure grants and funding to cities and local governments—all these sorts of things—is to tie those grants. Imagine if we had a process where we could make any local or state government improve the housing supply by a percentage factor to qualify for these grants? Imagine if we said: 'If you want your road or drainage funding then increase your available housing supply. Increase the blocks and lots.' There's money out there to do it. If those who think the government is the answer to doing everything aren't drinking their bathwater then they're certainly sucking the washer. This is money going into something to replace something, because there's a sense that government has to be in the centre of everything. It doesn't. This is a lack of housing that has been caused by government.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I accept that, Senator Pratt. I'll take the interjection, Madam Acting Deputy President. Over there they're so smart about what they can do as a government. The more we get out of the way, the better it is. We have caused this market failure—and it is a market failure, because people are too scared to put up their money because of the fear of getting knocked back for rubbish reasons. Well done on getting the bill thing. I hope it's a long and happy relationship. I can hear from the comments already that it won't be. You're already taking the micky out of each other on this. Sell it as $3 billion when we know it's $1 billion. Put your social media up telling everyone you're fighting for rent controls, when nothing can be done at a federal level. What has happened is a joke. This will cause some good, I grant you that, but not for some time. Don't sell it as an answer to everything, because really it's an answer to very little.

Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Housing is a human right. It's the cornerstone of a decent life. It's a cornerstone of safety, especially for women and children. In a wealthy country like ours, all Australians should have a roof over their heads—a roof that doesn't leak and that provides a home that's warm in winter and cool in summer. Housing should not be viewed as a vehicle for wealth creation. The treatment of housing as an investment vehicle, with massive tax discounts to enable the accumulation of wealth for some, has fed investment demand for housing that has driven up the price of homes and taken them out of the reach of low- and middle-income Australians.

In this wealthy country, we now have a generation who cannot afford to break into home ownership unless they are wealthy or have access to the bank of their parents. This is a generation so unlike my own and that of so many others in this place. They are a generation who already carry enormous debts for their higher education and even for their vocational education. They experience years, if not decades, of insecure work and stalled wages. They also face the extraordinary costs and consequences of a climate crisis that my generation did not face. In this context, affordable housing is so important. This means we must make housing purchase and rent affordable. Both are critical to a good life in this country, and both depend on increasing the supply of housing, especially affordable public housing, and capping rents.

I'm proud that the Greens have fought hard for nine months for a better response to our housing crisis. We took that policy to the last election and we have fought hard for it ever since. Our pressure has worked. We've held out because the problem is huge, serious and growing very rapidly. Secondly, we've held out because we can afford it. We're a country that's looking at providing tax cuts to the very wealthy at a cost of $313 billion over the next decade. We're a country that think we can afford $368 billion on submarines. A country that can spend these kinds of sums over coming decades can solve the problem of a housing crisis.

We Greens have won a series of very important things. First of all, this week, we've won a new billion dollars of direct, immediate investment in public and community housing, to be spent this year. On top of that is the $2 billion in the Social Housing Accelerator fund, taking the total sum to $3 billion for social and affordable home building. That will create thousands of homes for low-income renters and people seeking to buy homes. We've pushed to put the plight of renters on the national agenda, looking for action. Labor had a chance to make unlimited rent increases illegal, and they chose not to do it. This is the challenge that still lies ahead of us—to cap rents and to make it possible to afford rents at a moment when wages are not increasing at the rate of inflation. We need solutions into the future, which we Greens intend to fight for for renters.

Let's take a look at the challenges in my own state of South Australia. Here's why we need to fight very hard for a long-term solution on housing, especially for renters. In the June quarter this year, Adelaide experienced the largest annual rise in CPI of all Australian cities. The increase in rents was a primary driver of that extraordinary inflation in the city of Adelaide. Housing SA, our state's public housing authority, has a waiting list of 17,000 people, 24 per cent of whom are deemed to be in urgent need of shelter. They are very vulnerable to homelessness, and a growing proportion of people in this very wealthy state in this wealthy country find themselves without a home.

Over the last 12 months in South Australia, rental prices have increased by 12.5 per cent in the regions of our state and 12.2 per cent in Adelaide. I'm talking about three-bedroom homes. They've increased by 10.6 per cent in regional South Australia and 10.8 per cent for a two-bedroom home in Adelaide. Not only have rental prices in the state been outstripping inflation; the wages people use to pay their rent have been going backwards in real terms, making rent even more expensive.

Over the past 12 months, availability of rental properties has emerged as a clear crisis in our city and across our state. The number of properties in South Australia has decreased in all areas, and overall there was a 35 per cent decrease in properties available in regional South Australia. By contrast, our population has grown by 7.8 per cent in roughly the same period, so most regions see decreasing availability of rental properties while the population grows. This creates enormous challenges for businesses across rural South Australia and our regions and big towns, where we cannot accommodate essential services and workers and therefore cannot provide the services that those places need.

For those on very low incomes, rents in South Australia are unaffordable, meaning they have to spend more than 30 per cent of household income to keep a roof over their heads. A single person looking to rent a two-bedroom unit would need to spend 32 per cent of the minimum wage, 43 per cent of the age pension or over 60 per cent of the JobSeeker payment on rent. A single parent with two children, reliant on JobSeeker and with family tax benefit payments would need to spend more than 40 per cent of their income for a three-bedroom home in all regional areas in South Australia. For so many families, it's a choice between food and shelter.

Of the 36,000 renter households in regional South Australia, some 71 per cent were in the bottom 40 per cent of income, meaning that many of these renters are in severe housing stress, spending more than 30 per cent of their income on their rent and their housing.

Over the past few decades, the quality and availability of public housing has been eroded by successive governments as housing policies increasingly skewed toward the commercial interests of developers and investors, both landlords and speculators, rather than the needs of the increasing number of Australians who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. The result of this decades-long policy drift is over 122,000 homeless across Australia. Over 17,000 of them are children aged under 12 years. More and more people, including families, children and young people, are living in tents, cars, caravans, on the street or couch-surfing between friends and relatives. Homelessness disproportionately affects those who are most vulnerable. At the last census, almost 25,000 First Nations people were experiencing homelessness, which is 20 per cent of the homeless population. As the cost of living continues to increase, fuelled by the price-profit spiral, the fastest-growing group within the homeless population is women over the age of 55. In a 2021 study by La Trobe University, 23 per cent of young LGBTQIA+ people surveyed had experienced homelessness.

Solutions for our housing crisis demand action, particularly in relation to our most vulnerable citizens. The scale of the crisis for renters, for those who want to buy and for people without homes of any kind is huge. The proposals before us—the HAFF and the $3 billion on the table, resulting from pressure from the Greens—are not enough, but they are an important advance on what we had nine months ago. We need to fight on, and we will, for rent caps and for more public housing, but I point out that, without our efforts today—the work of Greens campaigners in cities and regions across our country and the actions within this parliament and place, pushing hard—we would not have the propositions that we have before us this evening. To all of those who said that we were letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and should have settled earlier, you can see how standing up to an inadequate offer and staying at the negotiating table has delivered better outcomes. It's better than crumbs off the table. They are not enough. We need much larger and more solid solutions, and that's what we now see.

We intend to work much harder and in an ongoing way for the rights and conditions that face renters. Renters are on the march for real representation and effective solutions for the housing crisis. Many of their parents and communities are very concerned about what they see for the renters, especially the young people around them. We need to fix this housing crisis, and renters' voices need to be heard for long-term solutions. Housing is a human right. It deserves a genuine fix. We say to renters that we will back their voices and find those solutions going forward until those renters have safe, affordable houses to call home. In this wealthy country, we need much larger and more systematic solutions to the crisis that we now live in. Changing the housing system in Australia isn't easy, but we must do it. Housing must be treated as an essential service, a basis on which to have a job, a basis on which to raise a family and a place where you can be safe. It's an essential building block of a decent society and a decent life, and it's not a financial asset. We intend to keep up the pressure to this end, and Australians deserve no less.

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

There's no doubt that there's a housing and homelessness crisis in Australia and that Australians are suffering because of it. For those that are in secure rental accommodation but want to realise the dream of owning their own home, this is getting harder and harder. The median house price in Australia's capital cities is now close to $900,000. That means the deposit needed to get a mortgage is almost $200,000. I'd hate to be a young person trying to get into the housing market at this stage. In 1984, average house prices were 3.3 times average incomes. Today, they are a little over 10 times average incomes. If the growth in house prices had kept pace with the growth in income, we would be paying $300,000 for the average house and putting down a deposit of $60,000.

Life is tough for renters trying to own their own home, but it's even tougher for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Figures from the most recent census, in 2021, showed that there were 123,000 people without a home on census night. Mission Australia's 2023 homelessness and stable housing impact report found that there has been a 103 per cent increase in Australians sleeping rough between 2020 and 2022. I'm embarrassed to acknowledge that, while there was a roughly five per cent increase in homelessness from the 2016 census to the 2021 census, the largest state or territory increase was 45 per cent, in my home state of Tasmania.

Some of the recent homelessness figures for Tasmania are shocking. In Tasmania, according to the latest housing dashboard released by Homes Tasmania, there are just shy of 4,500 individuals and families on the social housing waiting list, and the average waiting time for priority applicants is 80 weeks, far longer than when the Tasmanian Liberal government came to power in 2014. I just want to point out that that waiting list figure includes, as I just said, individuals and families. In other words, it's substantially more than 4,500, and it includes hundreds of children under the age of 18. As a longstanding advocate of the protection of children, the idea that children are without stable accommodation is deeply concerning to me. For about five years now, Hobart has had the distinction of being Australia's least affordable capital city for rental properties, according to the rental affordability index. While Hobart has seen a recent fall in median weekly rents, they are coming off a very high peak. The median weekly rent of houses and units combined is $489, which is way out of reach for low-income earners.

And it's not just the facts and figures that tell the story about the housing crisis. As a parliamentarian, I see anecdotal evidence of the urgency of this crisis. There's been a marked increase in the number of appeals to my office for people seeking help with housing, and I've heard stories about people on elective surgery waiting lists who are sleeping in their cars. Can you just imagine what living in a car does for not only your physical health but also your mental health, particularly for someone whose health is already at risk? In Hobart, we're seeing tent cities popping up across the town. If you're familiar with the Hobart winter, you'll understand how tough living in a tent, car or caravan is at this time of year. Far more than before, I see people begging on the street. Hobart City Mission estimated last year that around 245 Tasmanians were sleeping rough in the south of the state alone. Even homeless Tasmanians who are not sleeping rough still have to deal with the stress and anxiety of knowing that the roofs that are over their heads today may not be there tomorrow.

It's incredible that in the midst of this crisis the previous government had their heads planted firmly in the sand. Let's not forget that in 2019 the assistant minister for housing denied that there was a housing crisis and said he wanted to put a positive spin on housing and homelessness. Doesn't it speak volumes about the previous government's attitude to the housing crisis that they would expressly wish to put a spin on it rather than actually acknowledge the depth of the problem and take some action to solve it? For almost a decade, calls for action by community service organisations, homeless Australians and Australians under rental stress were falling on deaf ears.

As with so many issues the Liberals and Nationals have denied, neglected and failed to address, it has fallen to Labor to clean up their mess and finally take the action that needed to be taken. We went to the election promising real action on the housing and homelessness crisis that is gripping Australia, and that is exactly what we are doing. We put to the Australian people an ambitious agenda to build more social and affordable homes and help more Australians to own their own homes, and they gave us a mandate to deliver it. This legislation giving effect to the Housing Australia Future Fund is a key part of that agenda.

What we have before the chamber right now is a package of three bills: the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023 and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023. The bills will establish the Housing Australia Future Fund and make consequential amendments to legislation in the Finance and Treasury portfolios to support the new fund. The housing council bill establishes the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council. This will be an independent statutory advisory body which will inform the government's approach to housing policy by delivering independent advice on housing supply and affordability.

The $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund will use annual disbursements to fund social and affordable housing and other acute housing needs. The fund will provide a source of funding to support increased social and affordable housing as well as funding other acute housing needs for remote Indigenous communities, women, children and veterans. We've had criticisms directed to us in this place and through the media that the Housing Australia Future Fund is insufficient to address the housing crisis, but it's worth putting a few things into perspective. This is the biggest single investment in housing in over a decade. Of the 30,000 homes we have committed to delivering over five years, 20,000 are social housing properties.

Another thing that's lost in the public debate is an appreciation that the Housing Australia Future Fund does not stand alone in addressing this crisis. Let's not forget that providing social housing in particular is primarily a state and territory responsibility. The Albanese Labor government is stepping in to help with this effort because we recognise that the scale of the problem is too great for the states and territories to deal with alone. This has been the case for some time, but the problem has become considerably worse because of almost a decade of inaction under the previous government. Yet they're still going to vote no to the bill.

The other important point that often gets lost in this debate is that the Housing Australia Future Fund is not the only action we are taking to address the housing and homelessness crisis—in fact, far from it. Let me remind my colleagues in the Senate of what we have done in this space already. We unlocked up to $575 million to help fund more social and affordable rental housing through the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation. In this year's budget, an additional $2 billion in financing was announced to support more social and affordable rental housing, by increasing NHFIC's liability cap from $5.5 billion to $7.5 billion from 1 July 2023. Also in this year's budget, an extra $67.5 million has been provided to states and territories to help tackle homelessness as part of a $1.6 billion one-year extension of the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement. We provided incentives to increase the supply of rental housing by improving taxation arrangements for investments in build-to-rent accommodation, and we've expanded the Home Guarantee Scheme, which has already helped more than 50,000 Australians into homeownership. We've also delivered a new national housing accord, bringing together all levels of government, investors and the residential, building and construction sector in a shared ambition to build one million new well-located homes over five years from 2024.

We've invested $350 million to deliver an additional 10,000 affordable rental homes over five years from 2024 as part of the accord. In June, we announced an expansion of our commitment under the accord, the Social Housing Accelerator. This $2 billion commitment was delivered almost immediately to state and territory governments, creating thousands of homes for Australians on social-housing waiting lists. The states and territories will ensure that this additional investment in housing will work alongside better planning, zoning and land release. This demonstrates our commitment to working with state and territory governments to address housing affordability, supply and homelessness. We also announced recently that we will be adding a billion dollars to the National Housing Infrastructure Facility to make sure that we can get more homes on the ground, more quickly.

Altogether, the Albanese Labor government's investment in housing and homelessness in the last financial year alone has been $9.5 billion. That is a phenomenal effort, particularly if you compare it to the inaction and indifference shown by the previous Liberal-National government. The Minister for Housing and Homelessness, the member for Franklin, Julie Collins, ought to be congratulated for this effort. I know how incredibly hard she works and how motivated she is to give every Australian the security and dignity of a roof over their head. After all, Ms Collins was once a beneficiary of social housing, as was our Prime Minister, so they both understand the extraordinary life-changing difference that social and affordable housing can make.

I welcome the recent decision by the Greens to support the passage of these bills. While I would have liked to see them make this decision earlier, so we could start building affordable homes earlier, I guess it is a case of better late than never. I note that the Greens are still calling for rent controls, even though this demand is no longer linked to the passage of these bills. On the subject of rent controls, I would like to bring to the Greens' attention a recent study by the Centre for Equitable Housing, which is a think tank that advocates for all Australians to have secure, affordable housing. The study said:

We find that first generation rent control, or 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. Freezing rents has been shown to reduce supply at the lower end of the market, as investors shift to higher-yield property development and withdraw more affordable properties from the market altogether.

The study goes on to say:

In the medium- to long-term, increasing social housing stock is critical to resolving rental unaffordability and insecurity.

In a nutshell, the study is saying that rent controls do not work.

I welcome the Greens' decision to no longer make a measure that demonstrably does not work as a pre-condition of passing these bills. Having said that, it has been disappointing to hear such disingenuous debate over the months since the bills were originally introduced. One argument I've found especially disappointing is the description of future fund investment as gambling on the stock market. We've heard it again tonight from the nay-sayers on the other side. Any suggestion that this investment is a gamble is patently false. Australia's future funds are carefully managed and balanced portfolios of investments including private equity, cash and tangible assets. They have returned an average of nine per cent per year over the past decade. This type of balanced investment is similar to the approach taken by Australia's superannuation funds. Australia's future funds provide for consistent and reliable disbursements, and the claim that the money invested in them is being gambled is patently ridiculous.

From this fund we are firmly committed to delivering 30,000 houses over the first five years, including at least 1,200 in Tasmania, my home state. I remind all senators that the Housing Australia Future Fund is supported by the community housing sector. It's supported by the Housing Industry Association, Master Builders Australia, homelessness services, National Shelter, Homelessness Australia, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association, the Community Housing Industry Association and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. They all want to see these bills passed as a matter of priority. They want to see us get on with the job of delivering this housing. So let us get on with it. Let us pass these bills and get shovels in the ground, and hand over the keys of thousands of new houses to the Australians who so desperately need them. I commend the bills to the Senate.

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This debate has rolled on for hours. We've also seen the debate roll on in previous weeks and months. I'm not going to stand here and reiterate all of the issues, but we are once again in a situation where the Liberal Party don't want anything at all, the Greens party want absolutely everything, the Nationals want a left-handed dandelion, and we are standing here trying to deliver what is a very, very reasonable, desperately needed injection into the housing market.

When I visited Uniting Country SA in Port Pirie last year, they told me they were providing homeless people with sleeping bags and tents because there was no housing. And, just to be clear, that was before the election of a Labor government. That was while we had a Liberal-National government. I have heard from the South Australian Council of Social Services and various regional employers that the availability of affordable accommodation in our regions is one of the biggest barriers to attracting workers, therefore impacting our economic future. Again, just to be clear, this type of housing shortage does not occur overnight. This is not something that just miraculously occurred on 22 May last year. This is the result of year on year of neglect—absolutely disgraceful neglect.

That decade of inaction that we've seen from those opposite has resulted in significant challenges in our housing market in Australia. With them having turned a blind eye to devastating stories for so many years, it's only once they're in opposition that they jump up and down and start paying attention and saying that it's a problem. While they were in government, they didn't care and they didn't do anything. Unlike those opposite, I do believe that we should always offer people a hand up when they need it most. There are many on our side who have relied upon social and affordable housing in our lifetimes—and I am one of them. There are those of us who haven't known quite where our housing was going to come from next. Being uncertain and being in that situation where you didn't know what was going to happen next, that need for secure housing is the baseline for everything else. So listening to this debate is a disgrace. The care that is being shown now that has not been shown for the preceding 10 years is a disgrace.

I am delighted to stand here and support these bills, these bills that are going to fundamentally make a difference. Is a gambling? No. We have a range of this type of funding across government that has been running well for many years, thank you very much. All of the scaremongering and the hoo-ha is just a disgrace. This is just political grandstanding. We are standing here with a series of bills and a policy that are going to make a fundamental difference to housing in this country, and that is something we should all get behind. Try to put some of that political spin, and muck and bother, away and think about those people out there tonight who cannot find affordable housing—single parents, key workers, families who are struggling. This is, critically, about the good and the wellbeing of the people of Australia. I commend these bills to this chamber.

Debate interrupted.

Senate adjourned at 21 : 59