AFFORDABLE HOUSING

The Hon. M. PARNELL (15:53): Today I want to talk about affordable housing in South Australia. On Monday, I was pleased to attend the launch of a new campaign under the banner of Australians for Affordable Housing, hosted by SACOSS. Australians for Affordable Housing is a coalition of 60 national and state housing, welfare and community sector organisations that has come together to highlight the problems of housing affordability in Australia. The campaign has a website—www.housingstressed.org.au—and I urge all members to pay the site a visit and get some perspective on the nature and extent of the problem, including here in South Australia.

Important new research released by Australians for Affordable Housing shows where housing stress is hitting Adelaide and regional SA the hardest. The research shows the local government areas where both renters and home purchasers struggle with high housing costs. The problem of housing stress is significant and it is impacting renters much more than those with mortgages. For example, almost half of all people renting privately in Playford are paying more than 30 per cent of their income in rent, while over 20 per cent are in housing stress with a mortgage. These are amongst the worst figures nationally and they show how the lack of rental housing is causing significant financial pressures on South Australian families.

At the top of the table there are areas that we know are struggling, like Playford, Port Adelaide Enfield and Salisbury, but many households in central Adelaide, too, are facing housing costs that eat up far too much of their weekly pay and eat into other essentials of life. In regional South Australia, Alexandrina, Yankalilla, Murray Bridge and Port Lincoln are the regional areas under the highest levels of housing stress, with around 16 per cent of households on low income and paying high housing costs. These figures are derived from modelled census data, and I seek leave to incorporate into Hansard two statistical tables showing housing stress levels across local government areas in metropolitan and regional South Australia.

Leave granted.

Housing stress-Australians for Affordable Housing local council league table*

*This league table provides for comparison of small local areas and is based on modelled census numbers. These are not directly comparable with recently published housing stress modelling on ABS Survey of Income and Housing data.

Housing stress-Australians for Affordable Housing local council league table*

*This league table provides for comparison of small local areas and is based on modelled census numbers. These are not directly comparable with recently published housing stress modelling on ABS Survey of Income and Housing data.

The Hon. M. PARNELL: Housing markets are complex and interlinked and we need policy solutions that are similarly sophisticated and integrated. We need to address the problems that inflate house prices for first home buyers and make rental housing unaffordable. Governments at all levels influence the housing market through tax incentives, first home owner grants, affordable housing programs, planning controls and rent assistance; yet there is no overarching plan to drive these interventions and the result is that they are not coordinated, often contradictory and ultimately ineffective.

The Australians for Affordable Housing campaign believes that the goal of government housing policy should be to ensure that all Australian households can access affordable housing and that government action needs to be coordinated to deliver that goal.

Top of the list of policy changes is investment in more low-cost rental housing. We also need more opportunities for low-income households to get into home ownership and better financial assistance for low-income renters. We also need to change the housing investment tax arrangements that drive up house prices. I am hoping that the current Environment, Resources and Development Committee inquiry into medium-density housing will come up with some concrete suggestions in relation to state charges and taxes, including stamp duty and land tax. I note that Ken Henry, in his overarching review of taxation, also recommended that the states look at these taxes.

Another Legislative Council select committee that will be able to deal with this is the committee looking into residential and industrial development at Port Adelaide and the wider Lefevre Peninsula. The time is right and the location is right, given the axing of the Newport Quays development recently. When the government goes back to the drawing board, hopefully with the community on side, it needs to look at redressing the worrying housing affordability statistics at the port, with 17 per cent of households under housing stress and 36 per cent of renters in the private rental market under stress.

What we do not want are simplistic solutions that deliver more urban sprawl and create future ghettos of disadvantage. Releasing more land at the fringe is not the answer. There is a real worry that young families in particular will be attracted out to the fringe by cheap house and land packages and then be marooned by high petrol prices once the impacts of peak oil kick in. The cost of housing and the cost and availability of transport need to be looked at together. I commend Australians for Affordable Housing for kicking off this campaign and I urge all members to get on board.