As Australia's affordable housing crisis continues to leave people without a home, Eden-Monaro's candidates from Labor, the Liberals and the Greens have weighed in with their proposals to improve the situation.
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When Anglicare's recent Rental Affordability Snapshot was released national housing campaign Everybody's Home called for a national strategy to create 300,000 new social and Indigenous Australian housing properties and 200,000 low-cost rental properties for low and middle income earners by 2036.
Everybody's Home spokesperson Kate Colvin said more than 800,000 Australian households were living in rental stress, with working families struggling to find homes in almost every part of the country.
"If people are working day in, day out and still can't afford to rent a home and our aged pensioners have nowhere safe and affordable to live then our housing system is still clearly very broken," she said.
She said governments were investing less every year on social housing, which meant people struggling in the private rental market had nowhere else to go.
Responding to the findings in the snapshot, Member for Eden-Monaro Mike Kelly said it was obvious to everyone except Prime Minister Scott Morrison that Australia was in the midst of a housing affordability crisis.
"Under Scott Morrison and his Liberals, everything has gone up except people's wages," Dr Kelly said.
"Yet, over the past six years, Scott Morrison and the Liberals have slashed penalty rates, cut the age pension, and tried to cut Newstart."
He said Labor wanted to ensure the minimum wage was a living wage, restore penalty rates, review Newstart and ease the cost of living for age pensioners by introducing a pensioners dental plan through Medicare.
"We will reform negative gearing, and support the construction of 250,000 new affordable homes over the next decade," he said.
But the Liberals' candidate for Eden-Monaro Fiona Kotvojs said if you increased the capital gains tax and decreased or removed negative gearing it would result in extra costs for house owners that would be passed on to renters.
She did agree affordable housing was an issue in Australia, saying it had been an issue all her life.
"But the actual price of houses and the price of rent is a function of how much supply there is," she said.
In order to increase supply she said local government could open up more land for housing development.
Dr Kotvojs said the federal government was providing $7.5billion over five years to support housing and homelessness, had allocated an additional $620million in the recent budget to be spent on homelessness through the state government, and provided an annual $4.5billion for rent assistance.
The Greens' candidate for Eden-Monaro Patrick McGinlay said the Bega Valley rental situation, as in much of the Eden-Monaro electorate, was far from being acceptable.
"No-one in this country should be homeless and everyone should be able to afford safe and secure rental accommodation," he said.
He said the Greens' plan included building 500,000 rent-controlled and well-designed public and community homes, committing $30million to properly fund tenancy advocacy services, phasing out the capital gains tax discount and reforming negative gearing.
Also, he said the Greens would establish a national standard for residential tenancy agreements including minimum energy and security standards and protection against evictions, unfair rent increases and poorly maintained properties.
Albert McKnight
Journalist at Bega District News.
Journalist at Bega District News.
