Legislative Council, Wednesday 7 September 2022

Ms FORREST - Mr President, I was not really planning to get up straight away but no one else did. Between the time this bill was debated downstairs and now it is here, I have read through the bill and all the information that has been provided alongside it, including the draft statement of expectations and the letter from the minister. I appreciate that we have just been circulated a document that talks about the differences between what this bill seeks to deliver and the bill it effectively replaces, the Homes Act. Mr President, I am going to read through the notes I made before the briefings and, depending on the time - it will not take that long.

I will then go to some of the comments and matters that were raised in the briefing and then hopefully refer to some of the matters in that document we have been provided with, although I have not had a lot of time to read it. Other members may wish to refer to that more fully in their contributions.

Access to safe, secure and accessible housing is a basic human right and is essential. I think we all agree on that and I do not think anyone would argue any differently. Without this, people's health suffers; their access to and outcomes from education reduce; their opportunities for employment reduce. The reality for many is increasing social isolation; poorer health and a double-whammy that they are more likely to live in poverty and they would be more subject to our justice system; and the list goes on. Without housing you are behind the eight ball at the very beginning. If you take a big picture view here, without access to safe, secure, accessible housing the costs of the health system rise; the cost to our social services rise; and sadly, the likelihood is that costs to our justice system increase - all because a person does not have access to a safe, secure and accessible house or home to live in.

Like other members, I find it heartbreaking to be unable to assist so many of our constituents to find safe, secure and affordable housing. It is confusing, and it seems like it is a never-ending story of rejection for many of the people that come to our offices. I accept they have usually been everywhere else before they get to us, and often with no end in sight when they are unable to get on what they believe to be the public housing waiting list. Even if they do, they wait, and wait. It is heartbreaking. You feel completely powerless at times. We know this is not a problem unique to Tasmania. It is not a problem unique to the north-west coast. It is a problem around the world effectively, but certainly around all of Tasmania and mainland Australia.

We give our constituents the best advice we can to maximise their chance of accessing a home in the area they wish to live, which is often related to proximity to family and friends. The question is often asked about where they are in the queue, and it is impossible to answer. It was not until more recently that I became aware of the nature of the queue. The queue is not one queue - it is many queues, depending on where the person is located and which towns they are seeking to find housing in. Some people are very clear that they do not want to move too far from where they have been living, or they have been in private rental and being forced out because of a property being sold. That happened to one constituent of mine, and I will call her an older lady, she is in her eighties, but she does not appear like that at all. She is an older, single woman who now twice has had a rented property sold out from under her and now she has nowhere. I went on to our real estate pages. I talked to real estate agents. I tried to find any mechanism to support her. Older, single women are one of the biggest growing groups of people at risk of homelessness; and there was nothing that she could afford to look at to buy, even with potentially some family support, and nothing to rent.

It is terribly disheartening to have no answers and appearing to have no capacity to assist, certainly, in the short term. It was a situation that required urgent attention. The lease was up on the place she was renting within about six weeks. It is quite frightening having nowhere to go. She was looking where she could stay in hotels, which is not ideal either and certainly more expensive than being in a rental property.

The question about where you are on the queue is partly because the queue is not one queue, particularly when you have indicated willingness to consider a home in a number of towns, in which case the queue is several queues. However, I also understand people who do not really want to spread their options too wide, because they rely on the support of family or friends and their connections in that community where they have been. To leave that is actually detrimental to their health and wellbeing. I absolutely get that too.

Mr President, in my time in this place, we have seen many changes related to the provision of public housing. The member for McIntyre referred to that in the briefing. I was trying to remember the name of one of the other iterations we have had, but I still cannot remember it. It will not come to me.

Ms Rattray - TAH?

Ms FORREST - Thank you.

Ms Rattray - Tasmanian Affordable Housing Limited.

Ms FORREST - That was the one. I have been racking my brain for ages trying to remember it. There you go, and there has been a number of iterations. I have sat on a committee, probably back in 2007, 2008, that looked at affordable housing. A lot of the things that committee found at the time are just as relevant now as they were then. However, they are more urgent than even what it was then, really, particularly with mixed housing, the diversity of housing in any one area so that we do not have a concentration of just public housing or private ownership either.

None of the iterations we have seen have really been able meet the enormity of the task, and I do not suggest for a second this one will either. Sadly, I hear representations in my office every week about matters related to access to housing, homelessness or challenges with maintenance for those who actually have access to public housing.

I have written to the minister about a constituent of mine who has a number of challenging communication varying abilities. I will call it that. He is in a public housing property. He had a faulty heat pump, costing him an enormous amount of money to run it. The maintenance people came and identified the problem with the heat pump and said they would replace it, repair it, whatever. In the meantime, they gave him a bar heater. If anyone does not know how inefficient a bar heater is, for an older gentleman living on his own and how the metre spins when you turn on them on, you will know that was hardly a solution. This man now has an extraordinary power bill.

Mr Willie - It has gone up 12 per cent too.

Ms FORREST - Yes, but this is without that. It is just beyond his capacity to pay. We talked to Aurora if there anything we can do to assist this man, but a bill is a bill. He certainly used the power. However, he used the power because he was given an inefficient heating device. His heat pump was much more energy efficient when it is working properly. The bill was the bill because it was creating an overuse of the energy. This poor man did not even know this was happening for a while, until you get the first bill. For people like that there really are issues. It is just a maintenance issue, and an issue that has severe consequences for an individual like this. The same as mould in people's properties. Over the years I have dealt with many problems with mould in people's properties. Sometimes, they can address things themselves by perhaps not turning their dryer on and closing the doors, things like that. Some people do all the right things and they regularly clean and use bleach and everything to try to clean the walls.

Those sorts of things are really important. That was one of the things we picked up in that select committee about 15 years ago. There was a huge maintenance backlog at that point, too. That has been somewhat cleared, but I still hear these stories. It was particularly difficult during COVID-19, when tradies could not go in and I had a number of my constituents at that time finding it very difficult to manage.

I do not expect a new dedicated housing authority to be able to fix all these problems. However, I do need to be confident as I can be if I am to support yet another iteration, it will actually make a positive difference.

The Homes Tasmania bill is intended to deliver a dedicated housing authority as a statutory authority, responsible for delivering improved housing services and increasing the supply of social and affordable houses in Tasmania. I note the broader role that the authority will play in ensuring the wellbeing of those in need of housing and homelessness services, as well as in building livable communities. These are all really important aspects of it and the intention is absolutely spot on. The wellbeing of those living in our social housing is vital. However, if they are not properly cared for within those homes, that does not work. I did reiterate that situation with an elderly gentleman of mine who had the problems with his power bill.

According to the Leader, this legislation creates a role for Homes Tasmania in broader housing considerations beyond what the current department has historically held. I can see some merit in that. I can see the merit in taking the bigger picture view, having a body to oversee the whole picture, not just parts of it. That to me is the potential benefit of such a body. Also the capacity, as we heard in the briefing, to leverage against the assets, to actually take on a responsible level of debt. Debt is not bad; debt is okay provided you can service it. If you use that debt to build up the assets that provide homes for people, then that is a really positive thing. We should not be scared of debt per se. I will probably come back to that when I get to the notes I made during the briefing.

This broader approach or consideration means that Homes Tasmania should be able to consider our community housing needs and how our vulnerable people are supported within this. That is a key thing too. It is absolutely - it is not pointless but it is ineffective to just place a person in housing, social housing or supported housing or whatever it is, and then not to provide the appropriate services to support them to live in that house and to stay in that house.

As I understand it, it also means that it could play a key role in worker accommodation and how that fits within our broader housing need, particularly in rural areas or areas of high demand. That question I had answered about housing being built on King Island - none. There is a bit of a housing crisis over there. Anyway, I will pass that answer on and I am sure that there will be representation, particularly with regard to workers over there, access to housing for workers, health workers, teachers, police.

Mrs Hiscutt - Mineworkers.

Ms FORREST - Mineworkers when the scheelite mine gets going and that is progressing. Then you have the tourism sector that is growing too, with their golf. I know the member for Elwick is very excited about the golf over there. I would not take him on.

Mr Willie - You would not let me play there.

Ms FORREST - It is a pretty challenging course, up at Wickham.

It seems unfathomable to me that it has taken so long to realise, in many respects, this important strategic, holistic manner in which we care for people in housing is just as important as providing the house. I am sure it has been done in some ways but it is really important there is an overarching approach to this that considers the whole person and all their needs.

I would have thought we would have done this long before, in many respects, after we learnt - I believe we have learnt - from the disaster of the social housing ghettos that were built in the outer suburbs, that were not near services or near transport, and we placed some of our most vulnerable families and individuals there. We have them in all our electorates and we are still dealing with the legacy of that. That is the last thing anyone wants to see.

In my mind, that approach, whilst deemed appropriate at the time, was almost an approach of out of sight, out of mind. Put all those people over there and we can just think, they all have their houses, they are fine. Those were some of the people who needed many more services than those who lived in the towns or in centres where there were many more services and access to education and health care and all of that.

As I said, I know that one of the largest groups of those facing homelessness is older single women. I note in the draft ministerial statement of expectations that this authority is to ensure its programs and projects align with the women's strategy, to improve women's economic security, safety, health and wellbeing, and to deliberately manage and address bias that may inadvertently reinforce disadvantage in programs and services. This is an admirable inclusion, and I will be very interested to understand how this will be assessed, measured and reported on.

This comes back to the data reporting; how we assess the outcomes if this is to be supported. I will make some more points about this that your advisers may wish to feed back in your reply, Leader. However, these are the things - it is okay to have the words there, and the words are admirable, they really are - because we know there are biases in all our systems, particularly against women in a lot of these areas. Women escaping family violence; older women who are single and have not had the benefit of superannuation build up to any degree; who are much more vulnerable. How is it going to be assessed, measured and reported on? That is just one aspect of it.

Noting further that the draft ministerial statement of expectations, the board is required to provide data and reports concerning the activity undertaken by Homes Tasmania in the provision of housing and homelessness services. I reiterate, how will this data be reported on publicly, and how often? We know there is going to be an annual report that will be tabled. I do note in the bill, the detail regarding what is to be included in the annual report. It is quite comprehensive and that is good.

However, we are yet to see, and I know you cannot probably do this until the statutory body is established, but what will the performance measures be that will be reported on? Are we going to see outcomes-focused measures? Not just the number of people put in a house, because the number of people put in a house is only one tiny measure. It is about how many people have been able to maintain that tenancy? How many people have actually returned to education? How many people's health has improved? These are the things that safe, secure and accessible affordable housing will provide. We actually need to measure if we are to know whether it is working or not. It is not just building the houses and putting people in them.

We are all aware that people may find themselves in need of housing support at a range of entry points. The homeless person is not a stock-standard, stereotypical vision we tend to think of - a person in the street with a sign saying they are homeless. It is much broader and much more complex than that. You have young people couch surfing; we have mothers and children living in cars, and fathers as well at times; families living in tents out at the showgrounds here, and in other parts of our state. That is homeless. It is not just the person in the street with a sign that says they are. Some have a change in life circumstances that see them homeless, maybe illness or injury, disability. They may have become unemployed or unable to gain employment, forcing them out of the private rental market.

We also know how house prices have risen in recent years, making it very difficult for many young people, and particularly those starting off as a couple and their family, to access the property market. When you are a young couple who are married or in a relationship that is starting a family, most of them do not want to live with their parents. Probably their parents do not really want them to live with them either. It is always nice when they move on to their own independence. It is so difficult for young couples at the moment, or people whose circumstances change. Many of the people seeking housing support also require other supports. As I said, you cannot just put a person or a family in a house and think the job is done.

I have spoken many times in this place about what is referred to as the Housing First model in Finland. I am not, and have not in the past, suggested that we can just adopt that model in Australia, drop it in here and it will all be fine. They pay much higher taxes and there is a whole different arrangement for it, but the principle absolutely can and should be adopted. The principle supporting that is that early intervention is the key. The priority is giving someone access to housing; appropriate, safe, secure housing and then wrapping services around them on an individualised approach. By doing that, you maintain the tenancy and you can avoid re-traumatisation of a person by putting an end to the cycle of homelessness.

That is why they call it Housing First. The key to it is that you get the house first, you assess their need and you wrap the services around them. We need to do so much more of that. I really want to hear from the Leader a bit more about how Homes Tasmania, the statutory authority, will achieve this. How are they going to do it? If they can do it, through the statutory authority, why isn't it happening now? Or is it happening now, and we are just duplicating a process? I am trying to understand how this will improve that, because to me, one of the most important parts of housing is ensuring that people have the support and services they need. Again, it will help them access education, hopefully make them more able to access the employment market, improve their health and wellbeing and hopefully reduce their risk of interaction with the justice system.

Whilst this model can be costly at the front end - and I do not deny that for a second - it will be much more cost effective in a financial sense overall and will have an enormous human and social benefit. It is almost hard to put a figure on, but we know that there is enormous benefit. It is vital this authority we have established has a very clear focus on the wellbeing of their tenants and those who utilise the services.

According to the Leader's second reading, Homes Tasmania will be responsible for delivering the Tasmanian Government's record capital investment of $1.5 billion to build 10 000 homes by 2032. That is a big ask. I accept that is a big ask, particularly in light of the issues with access to building materials and even white goods. Hopefully, that will ease over coming months and years but we know that it has been a massive challenge with COVID-19 and then the unfortunate events in parts of Europe and Ukraine. That does not have a direct impact particularly on the building market, but it all flows through.

I ask the Leader if this is not achieved, can we expect the board to be removed and the CEO sacked if they cannot deliver on that? Or is the minister accountable, if Homes Tasmania cannot deliver on the commitment? The commitment is there, it is pretty clear, and has been talked about it for a while. Whose head will roll if they do not achieve it? If we do a review at two and a half years, five years, or seven and a half years - at what point do we say you are not achieving and off with a head? I do not know. Maybe it is the CEO -

Mr Willie - In 10 years time it could be any minister.

Ms FORREST - It could be, yes. Is it the minister that goes or is it the CEO of the authority?

Ms Rattray - In the past, it has been the authority.

Ms FORREST - That's right. Yes. The minister should ultimately be accountable and the Leader says in her second reading speech that the minister is ultimately accountable.

Ms Rattray - We will get that clarified.

Ms FORREST - Yes, whose head will roll? Okay. I ask this genuinely, though. It is not a tongue in cheek question at all. If this is merely window dressing, to put the responsibility of delivering much-needed homes to Tasmanians into the hands of a statutory authority, then that is just not a solid enough reason to do it.

Of course, the Government's arrangements with the built-in accountability measures are also crucial. We need to ensure the board sets the tone and culture that focuses on people, not money, and certainly not profit. I believe I raised this point in the briefing, that I always get a bit concerned when people focus entirely on housing affordability because what are they talking about? They are talking about money. They are talking about how much can this person afford to pay before they are in rental stress. It is not about the person; it is about how much can they afford to pay. We need to be cautious that we do not focus on affordability as the key thing. It is about the access to a home and the services they need to maintain it. Sure it needs to be affordable, it needs to be safe, secure and appropriate, and accessible if they have particular accessibility needs. This is not to say the authority should not make any money and borrow money, as I have mentioned; but if they do, it should be reinvested to benefit Tasmanians needing social housing and homelessness services and the other social supports that go around that. We did hear more of that from the providers who briefed us this morning and I will come to that in a minute.

According to the letter sent last week by the minister to all members, the authority will have the commercial capacity to borrow against a $3.5 billion asset base to deliver housing and homelessness services. While it should not need to be said, I would hope this would, and could, only be used for the stated purposes. This is where the scrutiny becomes important - that we can hold the authority to account for how the money is spent; how the leverage on that $3.5 billion asset base is used. One assumes it; but we need to ensure a rigorous governance framework with transparent accountability measures at the forefront to ensure that is actually the case.

The Leader stated that we must continue to work closely with our community service providers and sector partners in ensuring a cohesive and integrated approach to homelessness and housing services across Tasmania. This means working across all our communities, in the cities and also in the regions, and understanding and meeting their unique and different needs. I ask how this will be delivered in the regions. How will the authority work with some of the smaller housing organisations or providers in the regions where they may only have a small number of homes as part of a range of social services? I am thinking about some of the tiny service providers in my electorate that provide service to a very local community. They have some housing, mostly emergency housing, and things like that, in their portfolio of services. How will it interact with those organisations?

I assume they are not to be competitive, but rather to be complementary, because a lot of these organisations struggle for funds, and do an amazing job. For example, Wyndarra at Smithton in particular, in this sort of circumstance, does an amazing job delivering services to that community. They are really finding it difficult to get the funding support they need to deliver the services that their community needs.

Homes Tasmania will perform and exercise the functions and powers currently assigned to the Director of Housing, we are informed, under the Homes Act, with the relevant new functions and powers added under the structure of Homes Tasmania. The functions and powers conferred under this bill provide the foundation for Homes Tasmania to effectively plan for and manage the housing and homelessness system, as well as to acquire, develop, or redevelop, and manage homes in line with the purposes set out. I note clause three of the bill contains the purposes of the statutory body.

I agree that this strategic focus on building communities, so that our housing developments are planned and coordinated with the communities, could also interact with the authority as they have been the ones responsible for delivering housing and other services. They are the ones we heard from. I would like the Leader to provide a bit more detail on how the interaction occurs between the service providers as well as the housing providers that will interact. I was a bit confused when I first read through this, to see, was the Homes Tasmania authority seeking to take over the assets of others, like CatholicCare and Housing Choices? No, as I understand it now; but I am trying to understand the interaction between this statutory authority and those other service providers. I understand from the briefing today that they expect the service providers like Centacare, Evolve Housing and Housing Choices and others that are in this space, to be able to access funds to assist their building of properties, as they also leverage against their own balance sheets and their own asset base.

Mr Willie - They are already doing it.

Ms FORREST - They are already doing it, yes. There are some really interesting models out there that are not part of this. I have spoken previously in this place about Spencer Park in Wynyard. They do it entirely on their own without any government support. They leverage against their own units; they started with just a few small two-bedroom units for older people. They are all for older people. They are always looking out for little parcels of land that they could acquire. I am assisting them with trying to get through a process at the moment on a little parcel that would be ideal. They do an amazing job, meeting a particular sector of need in the Wynyard community.

Ms Rattray - Seaview Village has the same sort of model at Bridport, where they just build, and once they have that one done, they look to the next.

Ms FORREST - Yes. People have long-term tenancies in it, basically until they die. Myrtle Park is another one up in Yolla. These are little places that are doing a really great job in their own local communities.

Picking up on some of the points that were raised, I was really interested to hear from the housing service providers, and other service providers, who we do listen to, because we rely on their knowledge of the sectors that they represent. It did seem a little bit difficult for them to come out unequivocally in raging support for the process. It was more like we need to do something, this seems to address a lot of the challenges we have had. It is not an overwhelming endorsement, but it certainly was not saying, do not do it.

Again, I will listen to the rest of the debate to see what others have to say but I can see some benefit in having that more holistic approach to looking at the whole picture. The planning, the land use, where services are located, the capacity to leverage off the balance sheet and also potentially, to access other federal funding. That was a bit unclear as to how that still happens without statutory authority. It appears there may be some potential buckets of federal money that rely on it being a statutory authority, rather than a government department to access the funds.

Ms Rattray - That could change.

Ms FORREST - It could change, yes. That was a bit unclear. Anglicare and others spoke about the importance of having creative solutions to housing. We really do need to think about that. We should talk broadly to the communities we live in to find out what the people in those communities think could be done. Often it is those that live in the communities that see opportunities we might not. They are certainly not going to take it up the chain even to a statutory authority, should it exist.

The master planning of where to build homes, where the workforce is, where the access to materials and that sort of thing. A holistic approach to that is sort of partly building to the five-year plan. I do appreciate the fact that the five-year plan is a bit of a set and forget, then you review it at the end of the period. This statutory authority will have a rolling three-year corporate plan. I am not sure how often the ministerial statement of expectations is reviewed, but it should be. That was my question from earlier, about how that is reported against in the annual report. I also know, depending on where the portfolio of housing sits, one of our committees can call them in and do a good review of how things are going, how many houses are being delivered. We do not necessarily have to wait for the annual report. We do not have to wait - what I understand will probably be another one of the authorities in see in GBE week, which means we will now probably have three calls for everybody, which is hardly effective and appropriate scrutiny. If this was to be established, a lot of work will fall to the government administration committees relevant to that area, to call them in and either on release of their annual report or other times, if there was a need considered, and actually ask them for an update. That should be one of the things high on the list of priorities for our committees, along with review of things like TasTAFE.

A lot of the service providers and housing providers actually said this organisation can be nimbler and more able to respond to the need. We know the need changes quite regularly and quite quickly some times, but it is a bit disappointing that government cannot be nimble. We saw a bit of nimbleness around the COVID-19 response, when you have a real crisis on your hands. The housing situation at the moment is really quite a crisis, so I am not sure why we cannot be quite as nimble in that, acknowledging the challenge with building properties.

Ms Rattray - Yes, the response to the building the education revolution. That was an immediate response.

Ms FORREST - That was the federal government's response to the GFC, yes.

Ms Rattray - The state government was part of that.

Ms FORREST - Oh yes. We did get some buildings that are not all that helpful and bits that are like white elephants in a way.

I do note the concerns raised by Sophie Underwood on behalf of the Planning Matters Alliance Tasmania. She is rightly concerned the planning laws will not be overridden in the haste to build properties. That is really important when you are looking at the strategic planning around where they should be built, the mix of houses that should be built, the mix of houses that should be built and the people you want to make housing available to. As the Leader said in her second reading speech, that is something that will feed into the planning reform and review that is going on, but it is a really important point. We should not just be building houses anywhere for the sake of needing houses. You have to consider where the need is, where the services are and what is appropriate.

There are people who do not like things in their own backyard, I absolutely get that, but we all need houses. We all need a safe home to live in. She also raised concerns about the developers and donation laws being quite weak in our state and, unfortunately, we still have that situation at the moment, whether that can be fixed at a later time, but that is a genuine concern of hers. I do not disagree that it is a concern.

I will leave my contribution there. I have not had a real chance to read this document that is provided. Other members will no doubt reflect on it.

Ms Rattray - It is very positive.

Ms FORREST - I am sure it is. I did not expect it to have any negative points in it, but it will give me the opportunity to think about it before we get to the Committee stage, should we get there. There may be questions that I might raise at that point but I am interested in other members' contributions on this. I am still not 100 per cent convinced this is the right approach to take just because we need to do something. We do need to do something, but let us be sure what we do will have the best and most positive impact to deal with the very real problem of access to houses and homes for so many of our Tasmanians. I will listen to the debate.

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