Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023

The majority voted in favour of disagreeing with an amendment introduced by Mayo MP Rebekha Sharkie (Centre Alliance), which means it failed.

Ms Sharkie explained that:

This amendment is pretty simple. One in five of us live in regional Australia; at least one in five of these homes should be in regional Australia. Too many of the decisions we make in this place very much favour the capital cities, and I see in my electorate and I see in regional Australia more generally that there is a huge need for housing. Down on the south coast of my electorate, we're talking about vacancy rates of less than one per cent. We need to make sure that a share of this money is going across regional Australia—just an equitable share. That's where the need is so great and that is where people are so isolated.

Amendment text

(1) Clause 18, page 18 (after line 25), at the end of the clause, add:

(9) The proportion of grants made under subsection (1) or (3) during a financial year that are grants in relation to acute housing needs, social housing and affordable housing in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia must be equivalent to the proportion of the Australian population that live in those areas based on the most recently available census data.