Tuesday, 26 November 2024

Housing affordability

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:50): (1303) My adjournment is to the Minister for Consumer Affairs, and the action I seek is that he implement rent controls to stop unlimited rent rises. Last week we saw the release of the rental affordability index, as if we needed more concrete data to display exactly how dire this rental crisis has become for young people in Melbourne. Each capital city recorded their worst rental affordability costs since the index’s inception, and the people that feel this the most are those living on minimum wage jobs or relying on welfare. For people receiving JobSeeker, an entirely new unaffordability level had to be added: critically unaffordable. A single person living on JobSeeker would be forced to pay 75 per cent or more of their income on rent for a single-bedroom apartment across nearly all of the inner Melbourne region. Young people, disabled people, university students and people struggling to juggle work and study are being forced out of metropolitan Melbourne as a result. The only capital city region, metro, in the entire country judged to have acceptable rents was Canberra, and – surprise, surprise – Canberra is the only capital city to have proper rent controls. Who would have thought? Do not tell us that there is not a clear representation the policy works. The Labor Party has been in power for over 10 years here. The crisis has gone on the entire time. Renters who would have been in high school when Labor first came to power are now grappling with a crisis that has only been worsening as a result of their continued refusal to adopt policies that we know will work. There is no excuse for rent to suck up so much of the hard-earned income that young Victorians should be using to save for a home and plan for their families. What will it take for the Premier to wake up to the fact that this crisis is spiralling well out of her control?