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representatives vote 2023-02-15#3
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mackay staff
on
2023-02-17 10:56:05
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Title
Bills — Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023, National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023, Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023; Consideration in Detail- Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 - Consideration in Detail - Review process in 2025
Description
<p class="speaker">Max Chandler-Mather</p><p>There is a series of amendments that the Greens will be moving to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill today. This seems to have caused a remarkable amount of passion—</p> <p class="speaker">Hon. Members</p><p>Honourable members interjecting—</p> <p class="speaker">Milton Dick</p><p>Order! The member will resume his seat. There is far too much noise in the chamber. Out of respect, I will reset the clock for the member for Griffith.</p> <p class="speaker">Max Chandler-Mather</p><p>by leave—I move amendments (1) to (6) together:</p><p class="italic">(1) Clause 2A, page 2 (line 19), at the end of paragraph (b), add "(so that, by 2050, social housing represents 10% of Australian dwellings)".</p><p class="italic">(2) Page 8 (after line 20), after clause 4, insert:</p><p class="italic">4A References to affordable housing</p><p class="italic">To avoid doubt, a reference in this Act to affordable housing includes a reference to:</p><p class="italic">(a) rental housing; and</p><p class="italic">(b) housing that costs no more than 30% of income for the bottom 40% of households by income.</p><p class="italic">(3) Clause 18, page 18 (lines 22 and 23), omit subclause (7), substitute:</p><p class="italic">(7) A grant under subsection (1) must not be made to a person or body unless the person or body:</p><p class="italic">(a) is one of the following:</p><p class="italic">(i) a body politic;</p><p class="italic">(ii) a non-profit organisation;</p><p class="italic">(iii) a partnership, if at least one of the partners is an entity mentioned in subparagraph (i) or (ii); and</p><p class="italic">(b) has applied for the grant.</p><p class="italic">(4) Clause 56, page 43 (after line 9), at the end of the clause, add:</p><p class="italic">The Finance Minister must give 6-monthly reports to Parliament about the operation of the Housing Australia Future Fund.</p><p class="italic">(5) Page 44 (after line 16), at the end of Part 7, add:</p><p class="italic">59 A Reports to Parliament about Housing Australia Future Fund</p><p class="italic">(1) As soon as practicable after the end of each reporting period, the Finance Minister must prepare a report about the operation of the Housing Australia Future Fund during the period.</p><p class="italic">(2) The report for a reporting period must include information about the following:</p><p class="italic">(a) housing outcomes achieved during the period, including the type and location of housing delivered;</p><p class="italic">(b) progress on housing projects not yet completed;</p><p class="italic">(c) grants made under section 18 during the period, including:</p><p class="italic">(i) the amount of each grant; and</p><p class="italic">(ii) the recipient of each grant; and</p><p class="italic">(iii) the housing projects to which each grant relates, including the number of social, affordable and other houses it will deliver; and</p><p class="italic">(iv) the decision-making criteria used in making the grant;</p><p class="italic">(d) amounts transferred from the Housing Australia Future Fund Special Account to the Housing Australia Future Fund Payments Special Account and the COAG Reform Fund during the period, including:</p><p class="italic">(i) the grants to which the amounts relate; and</p><p class="italic">(ii) the amount of each grant; and</p><p class="italic">(iii) the recipient of each grant; and</p><p class="italic">(iv) the housing projects to which each grant relates, including the number of social, affordable and other houses it will deliver; and</p><p class="italic">(v) the decision-making criteria used in making the grant.</p><p class="italic">(3) The Finance Minister must cause a copy of the report to be laid before each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the report is prepared.</p><p class="italic">(4) For the purposes of this section, <i>reporting period</i> means:</p><p class="italic">(a) the period of 6 months beginning on the day this section commences; and</p><p class="italic">(b) each subsequent 6-month period.</p><p class="italic">(6) Clause 65, page 47 (line 20) to page 48 (line 29), omit the clause, substitute:</p><p class="italic">65 Periodic reviews of the operation of this Act</p><p class="italic">(1) The Housing Minister must cause independent reviews to be conducted of the operation of this Act.</p><p class="italic">(2) The person or persons who conduct the review must give the Housing Minister a written report of the review that includes information about the following:</p><p class="italic">(a) progress towards meeting the target of delivering 30,000 social and affordable homes during the first 5 years of the operation of this Act;</p><p class="italic">(b) whether the operation of this Act has increased the proportion of social and affordable housing in Australia, including progress towards meeting the target of social housing representing 10% of Australian dwellings by 2050;</p><p class="italic">(c) the adequacy and appropriateness of:</p><p class="italic">(i) the total value of the Housing Australia Future Fund; and</p><p class="italic">(ii) the annual limit on amounts debited from the Housing Australia Future Fund Special Account, as set out in section 36.</p><p class="italic">(3) The Housing Minister must cause a copy of a report under subsection (2) to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the review is completed.</p><p class="italic">(4) The first review under subsection (1) must be completed within 2 years after the commencement of this Act.</p><p class="italic">(5) Each subsequent review under subsection (1) must be completed within 2 years after the completion of the previous review.</p><p class="italic">(6) For the purposes of subsections (3), (4) and (5), a review is completed when the report of the review is given to the Housing Minister under subsection (2).</p><p>The Greens are moving a series of amendments to this deeply flawed Housing Australia Future Fund Bill. Again, it is genuinely remarkable to listen to all of this hatred from this side of the House. Let's go through the amendments. We want to introduce a target that 10 per cent of all Australian dwellings by 2050 are social housing. Let's be clear about this. How often have you said you want to negotiate in good faith? How often? Is this your idea of negotiating in good faith? It's your way or the highway, and your way is hundreds of thousands of people stuck on the social housing waitlists, homeless and unable to afford rental housing. How dare you. Let's have a little bit of a history lesson—</p> <p class="speaker">Milton Dick</p><p>Order! The member will resume his seat. This debate will not continue in this manner. Members who are not in their seat are interjecting, which is highly disorderly, and could be named if this continues. The member for Griffith will be heard in silence. If members wish to interject, they shall do from their seats and their seats only.</p> <p class="speaker">Max Chandler-Mather</p><p>Thanks, Mr Speaker. The first amendment is to enshrine in the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill increasing the proportion of social housing to 10 per cent of Australian dwellings by 2050. This will ensure that the act is measured against total housing need and the progress it makes towards increasing social housing stock, rather than only against the government's own targets that, frankly, will see the shortage of social and affordable housing get worse. Australia, at its peak, achieved about a seven per cent target of social housing as a proportion of total housing stock. Best practice around the world in countries like Austria and the Netherlands have seen their proportion of social housing reach up to 20 per cent of total housing stock. A 10 per cent target by 2050 would require Australia to build over a million social and affordable homes Australia over that period. That is eminently achievable. It's been achieved by countries around the world. That's the only way we're going to tackle the social housing need.</p><p>I noted that the Prime Minister, in his remarks, said that people have been throwing figures around. The figure that we rely on has been produced by the National Housing Finance Investment Corporation, the government's own body, which said that we needed over 840,000 social and affordable homes over the next 20 years. That's not the Greens' figure. That's not the figure of any part of the housing sector. That is the government's own figure. That means that there need to be at least 45,000 social homes built every year to address the massive shortfall in housing over the next 20 years. That's the government's figure. So that amendment will ensure that that's actually enshrined in the Housing Australian Future Fund Bill.</p><p>The second thing we want to do—and it is remarkable that it caused so much passion on this side of the House—is actually define what 'affordable housing' is. I do not know how you can have a bill that purports to build affordable housing without defining what 'affordable housing' is. The definition that we want inserted in the bill is to define affordable housing as:</p><p class="italic">(a) rental housing; and</p><p class="italic">(b) housing that costs no more than 30% of income for the bottom 40% of households by income.</p><p>There are some out there who try to define 'affordable housing', and certainly we've seen this from property developers, and you can be sure that under this bill, if it is unamended, this is what will happen. Developers will claim, 'When we offer a rental apartment at 80 per cent of market rent, that's affordable.' Of course, that is completely inadequate when rents have already gone up over 20 per cent, if not more, over the last 12 months alone and recent reports in the media suggest that we're actually due for even higher rent increases going into this year. Ensuring that we have a definition of 'affordable housing' in the bill ensures that this bill actually works towards building social and affordable housing, not some dodgy property-developer-led rubbish about 80 per cent of the market rate that actually does nothing to affect or deal with the housing crisis.</p><p>In the third amendment, we move to limit recipients of grants from the fund to governments or non-profit organisations or partnerships that governments or non-profit organisations are members of. This is crucial to ensure that property developers don't come along, access money in this fund and claim they're going to build so-called affordable housing when, in reality, there will be public funds going towards the profits of property developers.</p><p>Fourth—and again it is remarkable that this has caused so much passion—we're asking that the responsible minister be required to report six-monthly to parliament on the funding, outlining: the housing outcomes achieved by type and location; progress of housing projects not yet completed; details on grants allocated, including recipient, type of recipient, details of housing project, and decision-making criteria; reporting on money allocated by the COAG— <i>(Time expired)</i></p> <p class="speaker">Julie Collins</p><p>I thank the member for Griffith for moving those amendments. The government has sought to engage in a cooperative way with the Greens party on the critical legislation to help get more social and affordable homes on the ground. I note that the member for Griffith has flagged, along with the amendments before the House, further amendments that may come in the Senate, as well as additional matters. I have offered, for the member for Griffith along with other members of this place, to engage on any amendments that may improve the housing legislative package, and I want to thank people for their engagement to date.</p><p>I'm pleased that we will be able to support some amendments that are coming through, but I want to be clear that we do not support these particular amendments that have been moved. We don't believe that they improve the legislation. But we do want to continue to work with the Greens party, through the Senate consideration, to consider amendments that may improve the bills.</p><p>I would like to say that our commitments are ambitious but targeted. They're phased to deal with the capacity constraints in the construction sector, and they're designed to implement processes to fund the right projects in the right places. It is critical that the structure of the fund that we have designed has been deliberate. We understand that people have differing views and claims about that. But we want to get on and get the fund done. Creating a fund that delivers ongoing returns will protect it from whims of future governments. We believe that the fund will generate returns over the long term which will allow it to provide the annual disbursements to deliver a secure pipeline of funding for social and affordable housing in Australia, and that will provide certainty to the community housing providers and the scale of investment that will be required for new contributions to social and affordable housing, particularly from institutional investors who may be interested in this asset class.</p> <p class="speaker">Milton Dick</p><p>The question is that the amendments be disagreed to.</p><p>Question agreed to.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>-
- The majority voted in favour of *disagreeing* with an [amendment](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2023-02-15.125.1) introduced by Fowler MP [Dai Le](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/representatives/fowler/dai_le) (Independent), which means it failed.
- ### Amendment text
- > *(1) Clause 65, page 48 (line 24), omit "2028", substitute "2025".*
- ### What would this amendment do?
- Ms Le [explained that](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2023-02-15.125.1):
- > *This amendment to the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill ensures there is a timely review process in which we should be able to see the effectiveness of the bill in two years, not five years. Not every piece of legislation is perfect. Sometimes we get the processes wrong.*
- ### Note from 17/02/23
- Note that this division entry is currently showing Calare MP [Andrew Gee](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/representatives/calare/andrew_gee) (Independent) as a rebel. This is an error and due to the fact we have not yet updated our system to show that Mr Gee has [left the Nationals](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-23/andrew-gee-resigns-national-party-indigenous-voice/101804776) and is now an Independent.
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