Motions

Housing SA

Ms COOK (Hurtle Vale) (10:52): I move:

That this house—

(a) acknowledges the role of the government in ensuring that all South Australians have a roof over their head;

(b) recognises the valuable role that Housing SA plays in ensuring that South Australians have access to quality public housing and in providing an injection of housing stock into the market to keep a lid on private rent rises;

(c) condemns the Marshall government for increasing the rent of thousands of South Australians living in Housing SA and non-government housing;

(d) notes the significant impact that these rent hikes will have on the ability of tenants to pay for everyday expenses like health care, food and bills;

(e) notes that these rent increases may also be mirrored in the private sector; and

(f) calls upon the Marshall government to reverse these cruel cuts and stop using Housing SA to raise revenue.

Housing is an economic, social and cultural right. It is recognised universally as a human right, and that is within a number of different instruments. Every South Australian has a right to a secure and affordable home, whatever form that home takes. As part of the United Nations sustainable goals, we can look no further than the achievement of health and wellbeing, the elimination of poverty, the achievement of education for all and the elimination of hunger as points that are central and core within the umbrella of housing. Without housing, how do we achieve all these other goals?

Whether it is public housing through the government, community homes, affordable private rental or affordable houses to buy, the government takes this responsibility very seriously, as does the opposition and as did the opposition in government. We need to ensure that the right home is there for every person, for every family, to suit their needs. Labor has always stood for affordable and public housing for all South Australians. We reasserted this commitment to the essential right at our state convention last weekend.

We moved motions at our state convention that encouraged us to look into a multitude of options around the private market and around partnerships in order to attract investment into the housing market, this housing market that needs to provide homes for so many South Australians. Too many times this government fails to live up to this responsibility, however, to ensure that quality public housing is available for those who need it, and this results in a magnitude of other problems.

Sadly, people easily become homeless if their needs are not met in the public housing system. In fact, we have just seen some questions answered that were left on notice about the number of people evicted from public housing over the past 12 months. There has been a significant increase in this, and the first two months of this financial year are worrying in terms of the number of people who have been evicted from public housing.

If people are evicted from public housing, where do they go? The answers given to us include the private market and private rental. Well, how do they achieve this? It is near impossible for these people to achieve this on their own. What we have seen in the last 18 months as well is a massive reduction in the number of staff available within the public housing system to provide support to people who are in public housing and lack the skills of tenancy. We need to be improving and increasing what we do for these people in order to maintain their presence in a secure and affordable home.

Instead of recognising these problems and making sure that the most vulnerable people are looked after, we are seeing constant threats of eviction causing anxiety amongst this vulnerable community. We have also been told that tenants have been asked to leave the homes they have lived in their whole lives because their homes are not being fully utilised. People do not understand what this means. They are not being given any context to this or any time to prepare for this thought process that means they will need to move on from their family home.

The government is stretching people to the point where they do not have money for food or bills. This has been particularly highlighted this week during Anti-Poverty Week, which is being observed nationally, with 13.2 per cent of Australians living below the poverty line. This is a perpetual problem that we must address and we must deal with, but increasing the rents of very marginalised and often complex people in public housing in small cottage flats and single-bedroom units is not the way to do it. Not only does it put these people at further risk of living in poverty, and it does not just secure their place under the poverty line, but it also increases their risk of homelessness.

We need to remember that these people who live within the single-bedroom walk-up flats—these cottage flats—often have complex medical problems, complex mental health problems or a combination of all those. What these people need is increased supports and input rather than increased rent, because that $5 or $10 a week means the difference between their being able to have a hot meal or purchase their medications, or go without and spiral further.

When a government fails the public in one sector, such as housing, there are negative and flow-on consequences into others. When you increase rental prices in public housing, you often see private rentals start to rise as well. The private rental market is simply not affordable for many South Australians. Not only is the private rental market not affordable but it is almost impossible for people in the private rental market to then move through the continuum and attempt to move into their own affordable housing.

What we have is a continuum of housing from homelessness through to home ownership that at every point faces enormous challenges, and what we are seeing is tinkering around and rental increases. These rental increases must be stopped. We have to see investment in order to assure people that we as a society are committed to the ultimate goal of independence, autonomy and affordable housing.

Instead of the government acting like a profiteering landlord and making money from public housing tenants, why do we not see a government lobbying its federal counterparts? We hear often that we have this mature relationship happening; well, use it to have a mature conversation and pull the biggest lever that you have at your hands and raise the rate of Newstart.

Unlike what Senator Anne Ruston is quoted as saying, that income will not go into the pockets of drug dealers, pubs, pokies and all these other mythological exit points for people living on the poverty line: it will go into rent, it will go into paying for children's excursions at school, it will go into buying fresh fruit and vegetables and it will go into looking after yourself and potentially actually being able to invest in self-actualisation and seeking a job.

I do not feel that this government are considering all the impacts of these actions on the community. I believe that they could try to lobby and get that lever pulled to raise the rate, and I believe that many members of this government know in their heart that that is the right thing to do. We cannot fail the community in housing. We have to ensure that every South Australian has the choice of having a roof over their head. It is a crucial human right of every person. Nobody chooses to live on concrete, nobody chooses to live in the damp, cold, wet Parklands and nobody chooses not to have a roof over their head.

We know the importance of affordable housing in helping people live dignified and meaningful lives. We must not let the ideology that rent rises of $5 a week will change the budget bottom line get in the way of what is providing support and services to people who truly need it, not just in the city of Adelaide but beyond and in the regions. I commend the motion.