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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-05-14 Daily Xml
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Housing Affordability

Ms COOK (Hurtle Vale) (15:26): Safe and secure housing is not a privilege reserved for the wealthy: it is a human right. Without a home, access to basics such as education and employment is severely reduced and health outcomes are diminished. The federal Coalition's hands-off approach to the profound challenges in our housing system has resulted in a failed market, an affordable housing crisis, which is affecting millions. Under six years of the Liberals federally, home ownership is at a record low, rental stress is preventing young people from saving for a home deposit and homelessness is skyrocketing.

A recent Productivity Commission report showed close to 600,000 low-income Australian households are in rental stress. We now have a situation whereby young Australian taxpayers are subsidising overly generous tax breaks for investors. These same investors then turn up at auctions and outbid first-home buyers while purchasing their fifth, sixth, seventh, or more, property. The nation's pre-eminent housing research body, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), estimates a shortfall of more than 525,000 affordable rental properties across Australia. AHURI projects a further 727,000 social housing dwellings will be needed over the next 20 years to meet rising need.

AHURI and other independent experts, such as the Community Housing Industry Association, have consistently raised the need to address the gap in funding needed to leverage strong institutional investment. The Liberal's hysterical and unsubstantiated claims about Labor's tax and housing policies further highlight their inability to address a failed housing and rental market. It is frankly pathetic that Treasurer Josh Frydenberg continues to ignore expert Treasury advice on Labor's housing reforms. As the Grattan Institute notes:

Rapid growth in house prices has lowered home-ownership rates among younger and poorer households, contributed to widening wealth inequality, and left the economy more vulnerable to economic shocks.

By reforming unfair negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, a federal Shorten Labor government will be in a position, over the next 10 years, to partner with the community housing sector and institutional investors to build 250,000 affordable dwellings, which will be well designed and have low energy consumption. This will be done by offering 15-year incentives and $8,500 per year to the community housing sector to build new houses, conditional on them being rented at 20 per cent below market rent.

By retaining negative gearing for new dwellings, the McKell Institute found that Labor's policy will encourage new rental supply and put downward pressure on rents. It will also boost the Australian economy and create significant employment opportunities across the country because for every $1 we spend $4 will be invested by the private sector. This will enable people on low to moderate incomes to escape rental stress and save to buy their own homes. It will mean that hospitality, retail and other workers on low to moderate incomes can rent a home closer to their place of work and save for a home deposit if they choose to.

Labor's plans will also create affordable housing options for older Australians who do not own their own homes, including older women, who are experiencing homelessness in record numbers. The federal Liberals' failing housing policy, or lack of policy, is constraining economic growth and productivity and negatively impacting social wellbeing.

Access to housing stands as one of the biggest challenges in addressing intergenerational inequality. There is a persistent and increasing wealth gap locking Australians out of the housing market. The Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison governments' criticism of Labor's housing plan is simply to cover the fact that they do not have any substantive housing policies of their own. The Coalition's sole priority is to maintain the world's most generous tax concessions for wealthy investors to the detriment of renters and first-time buyers.

Labor will take a different approach. Our priority will be ensuring a housing system that delivers for hardworking, lower to middle class Australians, who will benefit from that support. After almost six years without a coherent housing policy, the Coalition have just this week woken up to the housing affordability crisis with their five-minutes-to-midnight housing deposit announcement—too little, too late.

This divided and dysfunctional federal government have overseen an affordable housing crisis, stagnating wages, immoral banking practices and record homelessness. Do not let them get away with it. Remember the last six years of pain. Saturday is the day we can all make a difference, and I urge every South Australian to vote Labor.

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