Building and Construction (Regulatory Reform Amendments) Bill 2020

Ms WEBB (Nelson) – Madam Deputy President, I will speak briefly on this. I have not prepared remarks. I thank the members for the remarks that have been made; I have appreciated listening to them.

The parts I reiterate are that while we appear to be locked into supporting this bill – and I will be doing that – through the national agreements that have bound us to it. I fully concur with the sentiments expressed about the misplacement of this investment and the lost opportunity it represents for our state.

I will elaborate slightly on that in that the intent to stimulate our state economically and to improve job prospects in the state across this next period of time is highly important. It is absolutely critical we do that and do it effectively.

Other members have made the clear point that this will generate activity that would already have happened. That point is well made and well recognised. This is not delivering us something new, different and additional to what was there before. My particular point is that had we chosen differently, we could take the investment we are making in this space as a state and put it into the other opportunities also mentioned here today – specifically, social housing for the 3500 people on our public housing waiting list. That is, it could have provided opportunities for people with disability or those are elderly who require adjustments and modifications to their homes to have those adjustments and modifications made. The third one is opportunities, particularly for people on low incomes, to make use of a renovation that would improve the climate efficiency of their homes.

Those three areas, if they were prioritised with this investment we are planning to make, would have done exactly the same intended thing of providing economic stimulus – creating jobs to undertake that work. However, they would also have done much more on top of that. Not only would we have been delivered the intended stimulus that this bill brings us, in terms of climate efficiency, we would also have had people on low incomes living in housing that was healthier and saved us on the health front. We would have had them living in houses that were more economical for them to be in, in a day-to-day way. We would have reduced their bills, in winter typically when it is really important to do that.

We would have delivered better outcomes for our community on the environment and climate change front through that efficiency, delivered through funded renovations and improvements made in that space.

Second, the other part was the disability and accessibility options for elderly Tasmanians. In this state thousands of people live with a disability who would like to have access to funding to improve the accessibility of their homes or to get equipment they need within their homes to improve the quality of their lives; in fact, not only improve the quality of their lives, but also let them live with the basic essentials of a good life in their home. These are people who perhaps need assistance to get in and out of their homes with ramps and the like. It might be people who need assistance to be able to move through parts of their home with greater accessibility by widening door spaces. These are fundamental basic things. There are Tasmanians right now who cannot live in the basic way we all take for granted because they cannot afford modifications of their homes.

Where is our investment in them where we would have economic delivery and better quality of life for some of the most disadvantaged Tasmanians who are struggling on a daily basis to get about their homes?

The third one is social and public housing. This is a no-brainer. Putting this investment into that area, however many homes that might deliver us – let us pluck a figure out the air, let us say it would deliver us 200 homes; I have no idea what the amount would be, but let us say it is that – would get us exactly the same economic and job stimulus proposed in this bill and through this initiative. We would also get that many households provided with an affordable home to live in.

For those of us who have a home we can afford to live in, it is easy to dismiss the full impact of what this means. If we delivered, say, 200 homes for people to live in, it is a place for them to live, but it is also a place for their children to have a safe and secure permanent ongoing home to live in from which they then attend school. On top of economic and job stimulus, we get an education stimulus for some of the kids in this state who are most disadvantaged, who have difficulty connecting with education because of uncertain and unsteady housing and home situations. We deliver a stimulus for our future through that economic benefit.

We also, through providing social and public housing, provide women and children in our community with safety. We get an absolute bonus and stimulus in safety for women and children who are suffering from domestic violence in this state by being able to provide them with a home. Right now, women and children in this state are staying in situations with a lack of safety, with violence and abuse, because they do not have an option to go to. They are waiting. They are there waiting, not in safety. We would have a safety stimulus with a different choice for this funding.

We would also have a health stimulus. At a time, our state is suffering from an incredible health challenge and we were all, even before this pandemic, acutely aware of the health challenges we face as a state. If we were to deliver through investment in public and social housing, a certain number of homes to Tasmanian families for safety and security, what we would get is a health stimulus because a home that is affordable to you and can be something you can rely on permanently into the future improves health outcomes. We would see hospital admissions go down; see people able to connect to a local general practitioner; see people not suffering the same sorts of illnesses that a more itinerant lifestyle might generate. We get a health stimulus through this sort of funding.

What else do we get? We actually get a community wellbeing stimulus through that sort of funding. We would likely see a crime rate reduction from the uncertainty often presented by people who are facing homelessness, who are facing difficulty in securing an affordable home. We would see people who might be struggling to manage addictions of different sorts provided with a stable base from which they could then be better supported to address those issues.

This funding – a choice made to direct this funding just slightly differently to achieve all the same ends that are claimed under this initiative. We would also, could also, have received a raft of the most valuable, the most needed stimuluses in this state across those other areas – health, homelessness, domestic violence, education, children’s safety and community wellbeing.

What a lost opportunity, Madam Deputy President. I trust and hope that our state Government and the federal government will give more holistic thought to future investments of this sort of stimulus money, to deliver to us what would be in the best interests of our state, not only the best interests of a very narrow proportion of our population for whatever political purposes that might have been.

More Legislation speeches from Meg Webb MLC