Housing Legislation Amendment (National Definition of Affordable Housing) Bill 2026

Ms BOELE (Bradfield) (10:26): I move that: This bill now be read a second time. Since I was elected last year, the one thing everyone in my community has wanted to talk to me about is housing. People tell me that they're worried for their children and grandchildren and for their friends and their colleagues who are being forced to live far away from their workplaces and their families because they simply cannot afford to live in Bradfield.

Either they spend their lives in cars, trains and buses, struggling through long and expensive commutes, or they quit their jobs, leaving fewer staff in our childcare centres, schools, cafes and hospitals. At the same time, members of my community have started to notice all of these new housing developments cropping up, developments claiming to offer affordable housing for those very same people who are struggling.

But hardly anyone can afford these rentals either. So I started to wonder: what is going on here? Why is it that this affordable housing is not actually affordable?

Before too long, I found out that the 'affordable' part of affordable housing doesn't have a clear, consistent definition. When one authority says 'affordable', they can mean something completely different to another. And chances are neither will be using the term to mean what you or what a reasonable commonsense person thinks when hearing the word 'affordable'. 'Affordable housing' should mean housing that people who hold our communities together—the nurses, childcare and aged-care workers, truck drivers and other key workers—can actually afford to live in.

And it should allow them to live where they want to: near their workplaces and, really importantly, near their families. In Sydney, one in five workers experience housing stress, and in the inner city that number is even higher. Over 40,000 workers in Sydney and Melbourne live at least 30 kilometres from their jobs.

If COVID taught us anything, it's that these workers who ensure our societies run properly are out of the market. They keep the food and medicines on the shelves, the transport systems functioning and our kids safe. But, when they're 30 kilometres from their jobs, businesses struggle to retain them or hire new employees, essential services are stretched, productivity declines, workforce participation decreases and quality of life deteriorates.

People simply have fewer hours in their day for family time, for sport and for community life—all the things that we value and that make our lives enjoyable. Housing is the glue holding our communities together. It's essential infrastructure, and we all need it to be affordable.

Part of the problem is that so many affordable housing schemes define the affordability part as a discount to market rent. But for a nurse trying to find housing in an expensive area like Bradfield, paying 80 per cent or even 75 per cent of market rent is still prohibitively expensive. So, I started to think about how to improve and harmonise the definition.

I consulted with housing experts, and brought together key stakeholders for a roundtable in Parliament House involving developers, academics, politicians, think tanks and community housing providers to unpack the key issues. They all agreed on the need for a nationally consistent definition. And you agreed, too.

My petition for a nationally consistent definition of affordable housing had over 12,000 signatures. This is clearly widespread acknowledgement that the affordable housing system is not working and widespread support for more consistency and clarity about what housing affordability actually means. So, it's my honour to introduce to parliament this morning a private member's bill establishing a transparent, consistent definition of affordable housing and attaching it to federal programs funding affordable housing.

At its heart, the definition proposed by this bill is really quite simple. It says: affordable housing is only affordable if it's rented at whichever number is lower: 75 per cent of market rent or 30 per cent of a household's income. Now, when a low- to moderate-income household—in the bottom 40 per cent of the state's income distribution—pays more than 30 per cent of their income on rent, they've crossed that threshold into housing stress.

But with this definition, a household won't ever pay more than 30 per cent of their income on affordable housing. The bill also sets out criteria for who is eligible for this affordable housing. In short, affordable housing can be rented to households in that bottom 40th income percentile and which contain at least one key worker.

But it provides some flexibility as well. A tenant's situation can change—for instance, they might retire, or they lose their job. They won't be forced to vacate so long as their income stays within the 40th percentile.

And it gives tenants some wriggle room to improve their financial situation. Their income can rise to the 50th percentile—in other words the median—before they no longer qualify for affordable rent. And even then, they aren't going to be booted out.

They just need to start paying the market rent, which minimises disruption to the household, while still providing that incentive for them to find another rental. And if they do leave, their old unit gets relet as an affordable rental. This bill also specifies that affordable housing needs to be managed by a registered community housing provider, to ensure tenants can benefit from that sector's deep expertise, and that housing units are captured by the relevant state's regulatory framework.

The bill also specifies that when a state or territory receives federal funding for affordable housing, they must ensure that the term 'affordable housing' is not used unless it complies with this definition, so no-one can go around 'affordable-washing'. This is critical to bringing host communities along on the journey of absorbing more density in their suburbs and neighbourhoods.

This bill is a starting point, and it's a great starting point, informed by many, many months of work and the deep expertise of people across the country. But it doesn't solve all the problems plaguing affordable housing. It has limited scope, for two reasons.

First, as a non-government parliamentarian, I'm unfortunately unable to propose changes to taxation law, so this bill does not attach the definition to CGT or build-to-rent affordable housing tax concessions. And second, because the Commonwealth jurisdiction over housing is restricted, true national consistency would require the federal government to negotiate with the states and territories.

I have been pleased to engage with the government on this, and I hear that they've begun work in this area, but they're going to be judged on their track record, not on promises I urge the government to use this bill as a starting point: to take it up and improve it, and ensure that it spreads to all states and territories. I would very briefly like to acknowledge in particular the expert guidance received from Emeritus Professor Hal Pawson, who's been instrumental in shaping this bill, and a small, passionate, knowledgeable group of volunteers in Bradfield who contributed: Ben Lloyd-Hurwitz, Helen Barrie, Patrik Kertesz and, last but by no means least, Lindsay Williams.

Thank you. I would like to commend the bill to the House. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): I thank the honourable member for the contribution.

Is the motion seconded?