A government-dominated senate committee is proposing to block a joint bill from independent ACT Senator David Pocock and Member for North Sydney Kylea Tink MP that seeks to legislate rolling 10-year national housing and homelessness plans.
Despite working on such a plan already, the government does not support legislating it with the Chair’s report recommending that the bill not be passed despite 80 out of 81 submissions to the inquiry supporting the proposal.
Senator Pocock has lodged a dissenting report, calling on the bill to be passed. He said The major parties seem determined to keep living up to what Donald Horne wrote 60 years ago:
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."
The current government has been working on a National Housing and Homelessness Plan for well over a year but still hasn't published a draft. Meanwhile consecutive federal governments have taken vastly different approaches to housing and homelessness policy. Senator Pocock said this highlights why having a legislative requirement to have a plan is so important.
“It is frankly extraordinary that Australia does not have a National Housing and Homelessness Plan,” Senator Pocock said.
“It is even more extraordinary that the Albanese Government suggests legislating such a plan is unnecessary, contrary to the weight of evidence tendered in submissions and evidence to the committee.
“In so many other areas of public policy we set targets and measure our progress against them. We have legislated emissions reductions targets, legislated Closing the Gap targets, why not a legislated housing target or at least some agreed objectives, like ending homelessness?”
Senator Pocock intends to continue pushing for a legislated national plan and will bring the bill to a vote when the opportunity next presents itself to do so.