Back to the non-government questions and one which actually matters to people, Andrew Wilkie asks:

In 2023, National Cabinet agreed on nine reforms under a better deal for renters. Both National Shelter and the tenants union note that in Tasmania the state government is not pursuing six of the nine reforms so why is the Tasmanian Government allowed to slow walk these reforms and will the federal government inject some urgency into nationally consistent protections for renters?

Housing minister Clare O’Neil:

I want to thank the Member for Clark for his question about a subject that we have a really shared passion for and that is the situation faced by renters across our country right now.

I know that the member will be meeting with his constituents, as I do, not necessarily young renters, but renters who are middle aged, have children of their own and are living in that precarious situation where they get move from property to property and sometimes have to move their kids from school to school.

This is something I don’t want to see and people sometimes asked me in this job “What gets me out of bed in the morning” and one of them is this.

If we go back to the year I was born, 60% of low income people owned their own home. Today it is 20%. This tells us we have not only a long-term issue with housing in our country but because just because of housing the experience of low income people is different to what it was 40 years ago. Implicit in the member’s question is an acknowledgement that these really important issues of the rights of renters sit at the state level.

Almost all previous governments have said ‘we want nothing to do with this problem” but that does not been the case with this government. The Prime Minister has placed housing at the heart of our government’s agenda and instead of ignoring this problem has sat down with the states, made an agreement, the National Housing Accord, and part of that is asking the states to sign up to these things like banning competitive rent increases and minimum standards for rental accommodation. The member asked about the performance of the Tasmanian Government. Each of the states reports to me in their progress and the last report I received was December 2024.

Tasmania reported that they are complete on seven of nine of their requirements and two of mine are in progress, so I see you shaking your head there. The National Shelter numbers are from earlier and I think that explains the discrepancy but if the member does not mind I would appreciate the opportunity to sit down with him and go through the report and I am happy to sit down with him and push the government to move faster. No-one wants the states to move faster on this than me. It is an important part of the Government’s aged housing agenda and I thank him for his question.