QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator BARBARA POCOCK (South Australia) (15:38): I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Industry and Innovation (Senator Ayres) to a question without notice I asked today relating to housing. What a disgrace. This government said it would tackle the housing crisis, that Labor would make it easier to buy and better to rent, and that they would build more homes.
Well, we're still waiting. House prices are exploding. Rental vacancy rates are at an all-time low, and homelessness levels are at their worst in living memory.
There is bad news every day. Our housing system is broken. It's rigged to make the rich richer, the banks richer and the developers richer, and it's not working for all of those thousands of Australians trying to get their foot into their first home or to face the rising costs of rent.
Meanwhile, first home buyers—so many young people—are falling into despair. This Labor government has been in power now for four years. When will you accept the blame for your own policy failures?
When will you recognise and admit that you're making the problem worse? Safe and secure housing is a human right; however, too many Australians don't have a place to live. There's still no national housing and homelessness plan.
Our frontline emergency services providers are underfunded and are being pushed to breaking point. A recent report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that between 2012 and 2023 around 43,200 people with a history of homelessness died. Many of these deaths were potentially avoidable—nine deaths every single day.
This is a national shame. I recently met with two frontline homelessness service providers in Adelaide: the Hutt St Centre and Catherine House. They do incredible things.
The Hutt St Centre have never turned away anyone from their door. They offer a meal and all kinds of services and supports. In 70 years, they have never turned anyone away, and they are almost at capacity.
They told me about how rates of people experiencing homelessness have exploded in South Australia and how people are living in the streets and in our parklands. They're sheltering in doorways, behind buildings and under bridges. They're very unsafe at night, but this is often their only option.
They told us about young couples who come in for a meal who can't afford to pay for their rent, their groceries or their power bills. They told us about the growth in self-storage units so that people can store their belongings in there while they sleep in their cars. This is truly heartbreaking.
When I met with those carers and workers at Catherine House, which is a women's crisis accommodation shelter, they told me how domestic and family violence remains the leading cause of homelessness for women across Australia. They have seen a 60 per cent increase in women seeking support compared to the same time last year. There are women who are living in their cars, separated from their children, barely getting by, even where they happen to have a job.
We need to see every single person suffering from chronic homelessness given access to a permanent home and to wraparound support services. It's just not good enough. What about the Housing Australia Future Fund?
The HAFF has been running for two years. It's a billion dollar fund with little to show for it. The Greens welcome the ANAO audit of Labor's failed HAFF fund.
The fund has failed to deliver the social and affordable houses that Labor promised to Australians. From day one, we warned that this fund was too complex and too slow to deliver homes for the tens of thousands of Australians caught in a deep housing crisis. The HAFF is slow.
It's clumsy, it's complicated and it's costly. It is not the right way to deal with a housing crisis or to fund housing, and it's an open door for private developers who are looking for profit at every turn in housing, while thousands of people can't find a home. While the government isn't investing directly in public and community housing, they need to.
That is where the direct solutions lie. It's faster and it's cheaper. It worked the last time Australia faced a housing crisis in the postwar years, and we know it works.
We can do it; we've done it before. Why isn't the government scrapping the $181 billion in tax handouts over the coming decade that are flowing directly to wealthy investors? Housing is not a privilege.
It's not an investment class; it's a home. Everyone deserves one, and Labor has to stop making the problem worse. Question agreed to.