Page 1763 - Week 06 - Thursday, 30 July 2020
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people, and that is exactly what has happened. Twenty-one years afterwards we can see it; and we have been able to see it for a few years before today, obviously.
Federal governments over the last three decades have also let down Australians on funding for social housing. A proportion of Australians have never been able to afford decent housing in the private market. To address this, from the end of World War II state and territory housing commissions around the country built large volumes of public housing, primarily funded by the federal government. This funding built housing for those most in need, housing for working families and infrastructure for housing development.
Sadly, federal funding is now much less generous. The slashing started with the Howard government in 1996 and has not been restored by either the Liberal or the ALP federal governments since then. The current federal Liberal government is no better. Just last week we debated the federal government’s HomeBuilder recovery package. As I said then, it will waste $680 million. It includes the outrageous McMansion expansion grants which will pay wealthy people $25,000 to put towards a renovation and/or house extension costing up to $750,000. That funding should have gone straight to community and social housing providers to provide affordable rental homes for people who need it. Putting $680 million into affordable housing would make a huge difference.
I urge the Liberal Party to talk to their federal colleagues about the incredibly poor targeting of their HomeBuilder program. I note in particular Ms Lawder’s speech last week about HomeBuilder, and I really felt, at the end of that, that her analysis of the problem was not entirely correct and what she had not realised was that HomeBuilder was going to do nothing to solve it. Anyway, enough of that!
Income support and rent assistance have also been whittled away by federal governments year after year. The indexation of most benefits, including Newstart, which is now JobSeeker, youth allowance and rent assistance have been well below the cost increases which are actually faced by low income people. This means that recipients of these benefits are unable to meet the basic costs of living, such as housing, food and transport.
The federal government did one very good thing at the beginning of this crisis. It doubled the rate of the JobSeeker allowance, but the boost is only temporary. From October it is being wound back. The Canberra Times headline says it all: “Welfare cuts to plunge 1,000 Canberra children back into poverty”.
Of course, while it is difficult for the ACT government to respond to a housing affordability crisis which is primarily caused by the federal government, the ACT government does need to act where it can. This is why the ACT Greens’ first announcement for this election was a $450 million housing package. Our commitment includes a $200 million investment into new social housing stock over a four-year period and this would deliver a total increase of 400 social housing dwellings over the term. It also includes a $200 million investment in new community affordable rental housing.
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