Questions raised about solutions for housing shortage

After another fast-paced and dramatic week in parliament, I headed overseas to the US for training last week, doing a course looking at more effective ways to communicate and how to reach a wider audience.

I also spent some of the time looking at agricultural methods in similar environments and talking to people about the differences between our part of the world and theirs.

Housing shortage

There are housing shortages in many towns across Barwon, but there are also many abandoned or unoccupied homes. Recently in parliament

I asked the Housing Minister what the government was doing to increase the supply of new homes and to get disused homes back onto the rental or ownership market. In his response, he talked about the $2.8 billion housing package, 30 per cent of which was going to regional NSW.

Across the Barwon electorate this financial year, they have built ten new Aboriginal homes in Bourke, Lightning Ridge, Narrabri and Walgett and have budgeted $14 million for 25 new homes across the electorate – 2 in Bourke, 5 in Brewarrina, 8 for Broken Hill, 2 in Cobar and 8 for Wilcannia. There is more housing to be delivered in the near future with 49 homes planned for the Aboriginal Housing Office, along with important infrastructure through the Roads to Home program and the restoration of many other homes that have been left vacant. He said that, according to the government’s statistics, on average, only 0.2 percent of government homes stay vacant for more than three months.

While any programs to ease the housing crisis are welcome, even with these schemes the government is really only playing catch up and much more needs to be done to stay ahead of the increased demand for housing.

Mentors and students in parliament

One of the best parts of my job is to meet with students who travel from regional areas to experience our parliament in operation.

The week before last, I had the great honour of talking to students and mentors of the Regional Development Australia Central West’s 2022 TEN4TEN mentoring and leadership development program after they sat in gallery for Question Time in NSW Parliament, which was up to its usual raucous standard.

Question Time is regularly an embarrassment for me as a Parliamentarian. We often see behaviour of MPs that is unbecoming when it should genuinely be a time that opposition, government and cross bench members ask questions of the government in the interests of transparency and to hold them to account. But instead, mostly what we get is theatrics and questions going begging without a proper answer.

I get a good run and normally get some good responses to my questions (mostly because I don’t engage in the garbage, so the government is willing to give me the information I ask for). The point scoring and political jibes take away from what should be an important part of our democracy.

The students were interested in the points of order that were raised and what they mean, so we talked through that. It was great to see an ambitious and positive group of young people with a range of aspirations, no doubt some will go on to be future leaders, but hopefully better behaved than those they watched on the floor of parliament. I really enjoyed the opportunity to have a chat and impart some of what I have learnt about parliament during my time here.

Resilience NSW

One of the major findings of the recent inquiry into the response to major flooding across New South Wales in 2022 was that Resilience NSW failed as a lead agency to provide adequate leadership and effective coordination” during the natural disaster. One of the
recommendations was that the government “consider abolishing Resilience NSW if it is unable to ensure “the organisation’s role is clear after reviewing its policies, objectives and funding” and that “the organisation and its policies are focused on meeting community needs.”

The government began dismantling the organisation before the report was published. Recently I delivered a Private Members Statement in NSW Parliament detailing some of the failings of the organisation and saying that any new organisation that replaces Resilience will need to address some of those failings. I had previously asked for the government to define the role of Resilience and even provide the public with a chart showing its structure and functions, but I never received an adequate answer to my queries.

The government now plans to create a new agency based on Queensland’s Reconstruction Authority and to “streamline” Resilience, rebranding it as Recovery NSW, focusing on the 100 days after a disaster has occurred. It remains to be seen whether the mistakes made with establishing Resilience will be repeated with the new organisation or whether it will genuinely be something new, better defined and more effective.

Pest species

It has been a great season for farmers because of the abundance of rain over the last two years, but when the countryside gets a good drink, it also means a bit of a bumper season for vertebrate pests and things that carry disease. There are ways to reduce the numbers, but right now, many farmers are finding the processes for accessing the category D firearms they need to eradicate pests is just too complicated.

In parliament the week before last, I moved a notice of motion for the government to acknowledge these problems and called on them to streamline application processes for primary producers and law-abiding firearms owners to give them access to the tools they need to reduce the burgeoning number of pests.