Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is disgraceful that, during a housing and homelessness crisis, Moreton Bay local council, followed closely by Brisbane City Council, announced that they would be evicting homeless people living in tents from parks and public spaces—not evicting them into any form of housing but just moving them on with absolutely nowhere to go. This is a step towards criminalising homelessness. And Moreton Bay council, I might add, has the longest social housing waiting list in all of Queensland.

We know that there are about 37,800 people experiencing persistent homelessness around Australia, and more than one-third of those are women and children affected by family, sexual and domestic violence. These thousands of Australians have been abandoned to long-term homelessness because successive governments have chronically underfunded housing and homelessness support services. They've been abandoned to long-term homelessness because the two major parties prefer to spend more on tax handouts to wealthy property investors than they do on housing and homelessness support.

Every single person in this country deserves a secure place to call home and support to stay in housing for the long term. The Greens are fighting to make housing a right and for policies that put people first. Our plan to end homelessness would provide 50,000 permanent homes with wraparound support services to those experiencing chronic homelessness. We would double housing and homelessness funding to states and territories for homelessness services and public and community housing, and that's on top of our plan to build homes at prices that people can actually afford through a public property developer, to stop unlimited rent rises and to end the billions in tax breaks to wealthy property investors. We could do this by making the big corporations pay their fair share, including the big banks. With more Greens in parliament, we will take action on the housing— (Time expired)