A federal minister for housing should be appointed and the recognition of renting as an affordable housing issue be put at the forefront of the national policy agenda, a Senate committee has recommended.
Some 40 recommendations on boosting housing affordability were made in the report handed down by the economics reference committee, after an inquiry that lasted several months.
The response of government senators to parts of the report has been cool. They rejected calls for a treasury investigation into negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts with a view to phasing them out.
The report recommended a minister for housing be appointed, a ministerial council on housing and homelessness be established, affordable housing be included in the Closing the Gap report and the issue of affordable renting be elevated to a platform of national importance.
“As a national policy issue, affordable home ownership tends to overshadow affordable renting even though many Australians struggle to access affordable and appropriate housing in the rental market. With this in mind the committee recommends that the Australian government recognise affordable renting as a mainstream form of tenure in Australia and place it prominently on the national policy agenda,” the report says.
“Given that renting will be the only form of housing for many Australians, one of the key challenges for government is to change the traditional view of renting as a short term transitional phase.”
The report comes a week after Anglicare found just 1% of housing on the rental market was suitable and affordable for a single person on income support and there was a crisis in the rental market across capital cities and in the regions.
A dissenting report signed by government senators Sean Edwards and Matthew Canavan said that while the report had produced “an extensive and informative discussion of Australia’s housing affordability problems and the resulting issues and policy challenges faced by governments at all levels”, many of the recommendations were either trying to have the federal government intervene in state and territory issues or were going to be addressed under the Federation white paper.
“The key report finding that the Australian government cannot vacate the affordable housing space or step back from its responsibilities in this area is supported,” the dissenting report says.
“The Abbott government is not vacating the affordable housing space or stepping back from its responsibilities. It is addressing the matter directly by supporting the Senate inquiry and developing an issues paper directly addressing the issues of affordable housing and homelessness in Australia.”
On making rental affordability a national policy agenda, the government senators said it was not supported as it was not consistent with the government’s pledge to reduce red tape. It did not support the recommendation for a minister for housing, saying assigning cabinet and ministerial responsibilities was a matter for government.
The committee members who participated in the report were the Liberal party’s Chris Back, independent Jacqui Lambie, Labor’s Sue Lines and the Greens senators Scott Ludlam and Penny Wright.
Ludlam said the report set out the reality that the government has the tools to deal with the housing affordability crisis.
“Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and their colleagues need to actually read this report and and then immediately moving to address this crisis. An essential start will be reversing the cuts [to homelessness services] that were made in last year’s budget,” he said.
The government senators said capital gains and negative gearing would be addressed in the white paper on reform of Australia’s tax system. They said the issue of tenant reluctance to exercise their rights under current legislation fell under state and territory government control as well as being an “individual responsibility”.
