I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.
I pay my respects to Elders past and present and to any First Nations people with us today.
We’re here tonight in part to celebrate the extraordinary life of John Cain Jr. John Cain Jr was a Labor Premier who reshaped our state and changed the lives of Victorians forever. Housing reforms – including huge investments in public housing, substantial urban renewal, and more housing for the homeless – were chief amongst his achievements.
Could you join me tonight in recognising members of the Cain family, who are here with us.
I’m really grateful to Per Capita for the kind invitation to speak with you this evening. I was lucky to be one of the many Victorians involved in the birth of this fantastic think-tank 20-years ago, with Evan Thornley and Chris Barrett and others. Although it’s a bit like saying you were at Woodstock – it was such an important cultural event in Melbourne, many thousands claim to have been a part of it.
And it’s no wonder. This organisation is making a profound contribution to public policy in our country, under the remarkable leadership of Emma Dawson who is one of the smartest people I know – not just in progressive politics, but in Australia.
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We are here tonight amongst friends.
And I hope you won’t mind if I start by saying something about why I have been involved in politics since I was a teenager.
I joined the Labor Party when I was 16. The reasons weren’t complicated.
I was angry about the injustice I saw in the world around me. How could it be that in Australia, a nation where the fair go was our unifying belief, kids in rich families got a better education than in poor ones, and wealthy people got better healthcare than others?
Since then, I have worked in public policy and politics at every level of government.
Today, I know two things to be true that I believed as a 16-year-old: if you want to change your country for the better, then the fastest, surest way to do it is through politics.
And, if you care about fairness, there is only one party. Labor. Because everything that truly matters in public policy in our country, every major social reform which has – in the famous words of Neil Kinnock – given working people a platform to stand on – everyone has been achieved by gutsy, reformist Labor Governments.
I take my job and my work incredibly seriously. I like to do hard things.
And so, in politics, I always want to be where there is the most challenge.
If you care about equality and opportunity in Australia today, there is no more important place to be than in Housing and Homelessness.
Housing is a life-defining challenge for many of our citizens. Young people are outbidding each other for rental properties, families with kids who would have absolutely owned their own home a generation ago cannot get a foothold in the market, and homelessness is on the rise.
But housing is about more than the individuals affected by this problem.
Housing is the foundation on which every Australian experiences life in our country.
It defines the expectations young people have about their future and lays bare inequity between the generations.
Housing is about how included our citizens feel in their communities and how invested they are in their democracy. And whether they feel stability, and confidence, as they move through their lives.
Housing is about what it means to be Australian, about who gets to live a good life in our country.
And it is about what we are all willing to do to make sure that they get it.
So today I want to do three things.
I want to reflect on our history.
I want to talk about the present.
And then I want to look to the future.
Because we in this room – full as it is with policy experts, progressive thinkers and Labor diehards – we have a special responsibility.
Housing is one of the Labor projects of our generation.
Australia’s housing challenge has reached breaking point at a moment when a Labor Government is at the helm in Canberra, and here in Victoria.
You and I, and great state Labor Governments across our country, have a chance to write a new chapter of the history of our party, and our nation, on housing.
So, let’s get into it.
The story of modern housing policy in our country begins with the Depression. In 1930s Australia, many of our citizens lived in a kind of poverty that today we can only imagine.
Just a couple of blocks from where we are right now, Victorians were crammed into dilapidated slum housing.
Most of those homes had no running water, or sewerage. Families lived cheek by jowl, sharing cramped, dark, damp homes. Thousands of children were growing up in unsafe and unhealthy conditions.
And all this was happening within a stones’ throw of Parliament House. It wasn’t going to fly. And so, in Victoria, in 1938, the Victorian Housing Commission was established, and the state began to build houses.
The goal of governments of the time was very limited – to providing some housing for the most destitute.
This thinking was radically and completely transformed by the Second World War.
The housing shortage Australia experienced during the late 1940s and 1950s was absolutely acute. During the war, new construction had almost come to a standstill. Soldiers returned to Australia, and they needed homes to live in. The baby boom began. And migrants – essential to Australia’s plans for postwar development – crowded into hostels, boarding houses and former army bases.
300,000 homes were needed, urgently.
And this challenge arrived in a moment where, for the first time, government was seen as the answer to this kind of problem.
The war had shown that governments could do big, bold, extraordinary things.
It also made clear that our country could tackle big national problems, if the Commonwealth rolled up its sleeves and got involved.
In the latter years of the war, Curtin and Chifley had drawn up Labor’s plans for an equal and prosperous Australia they hoped to create through government intervention.
Good housing, as an entitlement to all Australians, was central to their vision.
The Federal Labor Government leaned in and worked with the states on a massive post-war housing construction program.
Governments were no longer just concerned with housing for the poorest in society, as before the war. For the first time, governments were seriously engaged in housing everyday Australians.
The Commonwealth State Housing Agreement was the central policy tool, signed in 1945 by, amongst others, Ben Chifley for the Commonwealth, and John Cain Sr, for Victoria.
The agreement was more than just funding from the Federal Government for the states to build homes.
Because the Commonwealth’s money came with conditions. In fact, significant conditions.
To get the funds, States had to agree to a series of reforms.
They needed to establish a considered planning system.
They needed to ensure new homes were connected to jobs through roads and transport. And, that neighbourhoods had water, sewerage and electricity.
The states signed up to big new housing targets, agreeing to build 700,000 new homes over ten years.
They acknowledged that it couldn’t get fixed overnight.
But it was an ambitious target, because boldness and ambition were exactly what was needed. And they nearly reached it, falling short by just a matter of months.
Many moments of brilliance in housing policy have of course occurred since the post-war period. The Whitlam Government, the Hawke and Keating Governments, the Rudd and Gillard Governments, all wrote significant chapters of this story.
But I focus on that period after the war because it contains three essential ingredients to how we could think about the housing crisis today.
First, from crisis comes transformation - as long as Labor is at the helm.
Second, we have reason for optimism. Our nation faced a housing crisis worse than this one, and we built our way out of it.
Third, that when the Commonwealth puts its shoulder to the wheel, big things can change quickly.
Now, I want to bring us to the present.
We arrived in government two and a half years ago. On housing, the cupboard was bare.
When Tony Abbott was elected Prime Minister in 2013, the Commonwealth deliberately, brazenly, withdrew from housing policy altogether.
Indeed, if there is one thing to remember about the record of the conservatives, it is this: for most of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison years, there was no Commonwealth Housing Minister.
When we came to office, the States and the Commonwealth weren’t working together, indeed, the nation’s Housing Ministers had not met for the five years before we won the last election.
The National Housing Supply Council, the Prime Minister’s Council on Homelessness and the National Policy Commission on Indigenous Housing had all been abolished. And there were almost no Commonwealth public servants thinking about and working on this critical national problem.
What really gets me, though, is the attitude. When Joe Hockey was asked what he advice he would give a young person struggling with housing, he said ‘get a good job that pays good money’.
And so over that decade, what did we see? Declining home ownership, significant underinvestment in affordable housing, house prices growing faster than ordinary Australians could keep up with, and the accumulation of enormous borrowing by young Australian families which is today leading to widespread mortgage stress. And, by the time they left office, new home builds were at a near decade low, and we were in the middle of the worst skills shortage since the Second World War. What a mess.
To be fair though, declining housing affordability is not only a phenomenon of the last decade. Today’s housing crisis has been cooking for a generation.
Home ownership rates have fallen for all age groups and income groups over the forty years, but the really massive shift is home ownership rates for young people on lower and middle incomes.
In 1981, more than 60 percent of lower income young people owned their own home.
Now this is near 20 percent.
This tells us that simply because of housing, to be low-income in our country today means a life far more precarious and difficult than two generations ago.
Indeed, recent data suggests that up to half of Australia’s young people are delaying starting a family, because of housing insecurity.
In the face of all these challenges, no Labor person would stand back and do nothing. John Cain Jr would not have done so, and we have not and will not do so.
Our country is today led by a man who was raised by a single mum with a disability, who grew up in public housing. Every Australian should be proud of that fact.
And so, it is unsurprising that our government has built the boldest and most ambitious housing agenda in decades.
In our first term, we have re-built the foundations of Commonwealth leadership in housing. Not reluctantly doing the smallest amount possible.
But taking a big, expansive view about how the Commonwealth can help ordinary people, in ordinary families, tackle this problem in their lives.
As a Commonwealth, we are returning to the three big roles we played in the post-war period.
The first is one of ambitious leader. Our government has worked with the states on a gutsy national ambition and set up a National Housing Accord signed by states and territories, local government, and the housing sector.
Our big focus is on building more homes. Why? Because the reason for the pain Australians are experiencing today in the housing market – the reason why rents are going up too fast, too frequently, the reason why landlords often have too much power over their tenants, the reason that house prices are growing unsustainably fast – is because for a generation, our nation has not been building enough homes. More housing means more affordable homes for Australians.
Under the National Housing Accord, driven by our Prime Minister and my friend and colleague, former Housing Minister, Julie Collins, our country will strive to build 1.2 million homes over five years.
An ambitious target, because boldness and ambition is exactly what is needed.
Just as in the wake of World War II, the National Housing Accord acts as a galvanising national commitment between the Commonwealth Government and all States and Territory governments to work together to build a better housing system.
Many aspects of housing sit constitutionally with states and territories. So, it is only by working so closely with them on the things they control – the rental experience, public housing, rezoning, amongst others – that we will be able to give Australians the housing choices they deserve. The Housing Accord is helping the Commonwealth coordinate and drive reform, and we strongly applaud the mountain of work that’s occurring at the state level.
The Commonwealth is now back at the table as a strategic investor: funding infrastructure, investing billions of dollars in training more tradies, and directly investing in new housing through the $10b Housing Australia Future Fund.
Our direct investments in housing are huge. Our government has committed to 55,000 new social and affordable homes for Australians. Did you know that just in Round 1 of the Housing Australia Future Fund, which the PM and I announced a month ago, our government funded more social and affordable homes than in the entire nine years of Coalition Government combined?
Almost all of us will rent at some stage in our lives. And we want and need renting to be a secure and affordable experience.
To this end, part of the Housing Accord has the states sign up to making changes to get a better deal for renters.
It includes things like secure tenancies, bringing an end to no grounds evictions, and banning rent bidding.
We’ve also supported renters across the country financially. Commonwealth Rent Assistance is a Commonwealth payment that’s received by more than a million Australian households. And under our government, we’ve lifted rates of Commonwealth Rent Assistance by 45% - the largest increase in more than 30 years.
And of course, there’s Labor’s support for home ownership. For me as Housing Minister, this is an absolute article for faith. There are some in the debate who see the growth in the number of renters as neutral, I honestly just do not agree. I believe in expanding home ownership as far and wide as we can.
That’s why we’ve created a bigger Home Guarantee Scheme, which has helped over 130,000 first home buyers get their first set of keys. And, why we are trying to pass legislation to help another 40,000 in a more intensive way, through a shared equity scheme – legislation currently blocked by an unholy, destructive anti-housing coalition built of the conservatives and the Greens.
That unholy alliance has been a really wretched feature of this current Parliament. And it shows how much would be at risk on housing if Peter Dutton becomes our nation’s Prime Minister.
After a truly awful nine years in office on housing, the Liberals have already indicated they will cut $19 billion of funding from Labor’s housing agenda if they are elected. Imagine cutting funding to housing in the middle of a housing crisis?
Indeed, the Liberals’ only idea for housing is to let young people raid their super, which, if you think about it for more than five seconds, will clearly just increase house prices, reduce the wealth of young Australians in their retirement, and transfer a massive amount of wealth from a younger, poorer generation to an older, richer one. If you were trying to dream up ways to make the problem worse, this would be a good place to start.
The truth is, the Liberals have less than no credibility on housing, and I don’t expect any better.
The real surprise for me here are the Greens.
On almost everything Labor has tried to do this term of Parliament on housing, the Greens have worked hand in glove with Peter Dutton to block.
They delayed the Housing Australia Future Fund for months, using thousands of people desperately in need of housing as pawns in a juvenile political fight.
Now, they’re blocking critical housing bills before the Senate – including Help to Buy, a new law which would help 40,000 childcare workers, nurses and aged care workers to own their own homes. These are the very workers locked out of the market today, the exact people who need and deserve the support of government.
The Greens’ political strategy is really clear – they block and delay action on housing, then scream on social media that not enough is being done.
It’s a political tactic that we all find reprehensible. But when these tactics extend to denying access to affordable housing for thousands of childcare workers and nurses, it’s also a question of ethics and of your purpose for being in Parliament in the first place.
And of course, Australians can see right through this divisive politics and hitting the Greens where it really hurts – at the ballot box.
I hope they see reason while we still have a chance in this Parliament, to give hope and a way forward to tens of thousands of worthy Australians who need the help of the Parliament, and who are not getting it, because of the Greens.
Let me come back to our positive agenda. I hope you hear me loud and clear: the Commonwealth is back in housing, and under Labor, we are here to stay. Let me share a bit about what we are working towards.
I met a young family recently, up in Cairns: a FIFO worker and a teachers’ aide, with a two-year-old boy, and another little one on the way.
They had been living between each of their parents’ places, out of suitcases, shifting their child from one home to the other, trying to work out what to do. They had never thought they would be able to own their own home. But when I met them, it had just happened, with government support. And the family described to me what it meant to them.
Having their own space. A deck to sit on and have a coffee, and watch their son play. They were excited to be able to set up a nursery, knowing that they weren’t going to be moved on. That they could paint the walls, and put up pictures, and no one could tell them not to.
Australians want space for family, whatever that means to them. They want opportunities to build wealth, to have a little bit of room to move should something go wrong, so they can support the people around them, make choices with confidence, and grow old with security.
Labor wants Australians to have choice and control, so they can build a life that’s meaningful for them.
For those that are renting, we want you to have a secure and affordable home, not just a place to live. To have a family when it suits you.
We want Australians to have choice about where they live and how they live. Over where their kids grow up. On the jobs they have access to and how long they commute.
We want as many Australians as possible to have the stability that comes with home ownership and provide that through particular support to those who don’t have access to the Bank of Mum and Dad.
After all, we are a home owning nation. If you work hard, you should have the security of owning your own home – that’s what we stand for. As Darryl says: It’s not a house it’s a home, a [man’s] home is his castle.
Simple desires, but for too many today, they feel a luxury. And that what we as Labor people must change.
One of the things that many Victorians remember so fondly about John Cain Junior is that he was a straight talker. I met him a few times. He was direct, and honest, and funny. Humble, especially for a politician. He expected and demanded the very best of Labor Governments.
And I hope that if he were here, he’d recognise our work today as being part of that important tradition. Not always flashy, but fundamental to the wellbeing of working people.
We’re making real progress. Our government has built homes, expanded support, invested in affordability, and assisted a sizeable number of Australians into home ownership.
But we have done something much bigger than that.
We have taken the Commonwealth from the crouch position, stood up as national leaders, set bold national targets. We have laid the foundations for a new and energised role for the Commonwealth in housing. We must now build on those foundations.
One thing I know is that the hard work of making housing fair and affordable is only ever going to get done by a Labor Government. We are right in the guts of a great Labor project. We’ve done a lot but there’s a lot more to do – in this term and in the next.
If we succeed, we will create a fairer and more equal Australia, and we will genuinely make a difference to the lives of millions of people who need and deserve better.
After all, isn’t that we’re all here for?