Housing affordability
Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (10:35): Last week Anglicare released a report that shows there is not a single property or even a room in a share house across the whole country that is affordable to someone on youth allowance, and only 4 per cent of properties in the whole country are affordable to someone on the full-time minimum wage. Where are the students supposed to live? Where are the cleaners and childcare workers and retail workers and nurses supposed to live? The report found that rental affordability is the worst it has ever been, yet here in Victoria, under a Labor government, unlimited rent rises are still legal. There is a whole generation of people who have completely given up on ever being able to buy their own home, and now they cannot even afford their rent. There are 48,000 whole investment properties on Airbnb right now, homes that people could actually live in, but Labor will not do anything to free those up either.
What is Labor’s solution to the housing crisis? Well, in Victoria it is to demolish every single public housing high-rise across the state and rebuild with mostly private housing – because trusting property developers to fix the housing crisis has always been such a good idea! The housing crisis is breaking people. I have a memo for Labor: you can either act now, with the Greens support, when the crisis demands it, or we can fight it out at the next election, when millions of people will be looking and asking ‘What did Labor do in a housing crisis?’ and you will have to answer ‘Nothing.’