DOCUMENTS

Senator BARBARA POCOCK (South Australia) (12:12): I also rise to take note of the minister's response. Minister Ayres says he is happy to be here. Well, that's well and good.

He needs to be here. We are in a housing crisis, and it deserves the full attention of every Labor minister to, as the Senate has requested, address the gaps in analysis and, most importantly, the gaps in policy. The Senate deserves that full response.

It is undeniable that Australia is in a housing crisis. Australians are hurting. I've spent months in recent times hearing directly from people across our country about what's going on for them—renters, young people, people with disability, Indigenous people—and about the housing crisis that is driving too many of them and their families into cars, under bridges and into severe housing stress.

We have too many families who are in serious danger without a roof over their heads, young people who have given up hope of ever owning a house and renters being absolutely smashed by unlimited rent increases that mean they can't put the groceries they need in their fridges and so their kids and their entire families suffer. Many renters are just one rent hike away from losing everything and being pitched into homelessness, and governments across this country are not taking action, which they could take immediately, to cap rents and to help reduce the number of people who are living in real danger, sleeping rough.

That's why the Greens have been calling for caps on rents and for an end to unfair rent hikes. But not everyone suffers in a housing crisis. We've got 640,000 Australians in urgent need of public and community housing, but some people, despite that, are doing extremely well out of the housing crisis.

While everyday people suffer, the banks are the big winners. We heard last Thursday in this parliament from the big four banks, who, between them, in the last year we've got records for, earned over $30 billion in profit. Take the Commonwealth Bank, our most profitable bank.

Labor sold it for a mere $8 billion not so far back. Last year they made $11 billion in profit in the midst of a housing crisis. Our banks are some of the most profitable corporations in our country and amongst the most profitable banks on the planet.

The housing system we have was created by successive Labor and coalition governments and is deliberately designed to reward the corporate greed of the banks, property developers and investors and not ordinary people who are really struggling to get by. Last week all the big banks were unprepared to answer important questions about their profitability off the back of everyday Australians' mortgages.

The big four banks refused to tell us how much of their profits came from owner-occupier loans. They also refused to tell us what the average profit is over the life of an owner-occupier or first-home buyer loan. There's research that tells us that big banks make more than $228,000 in profit from an average 30-year loan.

Tax changes alone were never going to cut it. Labor needs to take on corporate greed in the housing market by taxing big corporations, building more public homes like we used to do—we know that works, and we know that that is a major problem for us right now—and ending grandfathering for wealthy property investors. Millions of households are doing it tough while the banks profit in the midst of this housing crisis.

More and more of them are suffering, and Labor is failing to take the action needed to deal with the crisis we're in. House prices and rents are out of control, and real wages are going backwards. Working hard no longer guarantees you the chance to save for your deposit and get yourself into a secure home.

No-one should live in this wealthy country without safe and secure housing that supports their wellbeing, their health, their access to the labour market and their chance of holding down a job. Despite falling house prices, housing affordability is at a record low in our country. The solutions are clear.

In a nationwide housing catastrophe, we need rent caps. We need to stop knocking down public housing. We need a massive long-term boost to public investment in good quality homes, being rented to people at prices they can actually afford.

We need substantial government funding at all levels of government to match the scale of this crisis. We need stronger, consistent rental protections across the country. We say to the minister, who will keep appearing here before the Senate: Give us the information we seek.

More importantly, give us the solutions we need. (Time expired)