Ms JODIE HARRISON: When I last spoke on Budget Estimates and Related Papers 2021-2022, I stated that the Premier's approach to the matter of public housing investment had been abysmal and that the housing issues facing this State amounted to a humanitarian disaster.
This ties in to another humanitarian disaster we are facing in New South Wales, one of which every member of this Parliament should be keenly aware. I have been a member of Parliament for nearly eight years and in that time I have seen this Government mismanage a homelessness crisis into a full-blown catastrophe.
Wherever we go in the Sydney CBD, we see visible homelessness—rough sleepers with nowhere else to go, sheltering from the elements in storefronts and alleyways. It is a situation I see in my own electorate of Charlestown: rough sleepers seeking shelter wherever they can. Not too long ago a young man was even camping out in the alcove between my office and the Family and Community Services office next door—an office which, ironically, includes the Charlestown branch of Housing NSW.
That young man is not the only person in that position that my office has had direct contact with. The former Premier made reducing rough sleeping one of her priorities, but we know that rough sleepers comprise only a tiny fraction of those facing homelessness.
Recently in my electorate a woman who was fleeing domestic violence had no other option but to set up a tent in a local cemetery. A woman in a similar position came to my office late one afternoon, desperately afraid that she and her primary school‑age son would have to spend another night in their car.
A woman named Jenny contacted my office, desperate for assistance. Struggling with a range of health conditions, Jenny had been forced to live in her car for months. Suffering from crippling pain, she was unable to find a secure place to park overnight. In each case, these women had been shuttled back and forth between support services, had often exhausted access to temporary accommodation, and still had nowhere safe to go. In each case, these women faced complex circumstances and structural disadvantage. And in each case, these women had been failed by a system that the Government has for years failed to adequately fund or support.
Our specialist homelessness services do everything they can to support people in this position, but they are stretched to breaking point. They were already overburdened before the pandemic but they have reached their absolute limit, and it is the most disadvantaged members of our society who are suffering as a result.
I acknowledge that homelessness is a complex issue with complex causes, but that does not mean it should be put in the too‑hard basket, as the Government seems all too keen to do. Homelessness can happen to anyone. How many times have we heard from those facing homelessness or who have experienced homelessness that they never expected to be in that position?
So many of us are so much closer to homelessness than it might seem. All it takes is the loss of a job, an unexpected medical condition, a death in the family, the breakdown of a relationship or even an unexpected note from a landlord terminating a lease.
These are things that can plunge an individual or a family into having to couch surf with friends and relatives, live out of their car or sleep rough. This a whole‑of‑society problem that requires a whole‑of‑government solution. While we have experts in this field—people who know what they are talking about—the Government does not listen to them.
The Government has failed to take action, and I have no expectations that this Premier will do any better. The Government clearly recognises that homelessness and housing are serious problems, but where is the commitment? Where is the backup? Where are the solutions embedded in the budget? They are simply not there.
This oversight is only one aspect of the Government's demonstrated ignorance of the problems facing regional electorates, including Charlestown. Public schools in my electorate are overcrowded, but there was no money for upgrades in this budget. Every child, no matter what electorate they live in, has the right to a quality, free public education.
The squeeze being put on local schools is impacting that, making it more difficult for teachers to teach and for students to learn. After the extraordinary efforts put in by our teachers over the course of the pandemic, having to adapt to online learning and navigate the broad range of challenges that came with that change, don't we owe them a good place to work? Despite the best efforts of educators and parents, we know that learning over Zoom is no replacement for face‑to‑face learning in a classroom. Don't we owe students schools with enough room for them to comfortably learn?
Following years of tireless work from community activists whose work has helped me to prosecute the case here in Parliament, I am pleased that in the budget last year funding was allocated for long‑overdue upgrades to Hillsborough Road. Hillsborough Road is a major arterial road in the Charlestown electorate, but it has not been fit for purpose for many years.
It is a dangerous bottleneck and has proven deadly in recent years. The Government delayed funding upgrades on Hillsborough Road for years. Now we are getting the money, but the lack of interest in the bread‑and‑butter infrastructure of a community like Charlestown is emblematic of a Government more interested in shiny, expensive projects in Sydney—assets that can be recycled at a later date and that all too often go over budget.
There are other infrastructure priorities in Charlestown. Investment in infrastructure has not kept pace with population growth, and it is common to become stuck in traffic at bottlenecks across the electorate.
My community is calling for intelligent approaches to growth, the development of twenty‑first century industries and job opportunities, sustainable development with adequate infrastructure, public transport that meets population growth and strong public services.
Where are they in this budget? In his career as Treasurer, when has the Premier shown his capacity for or interest in delivering this? Budgets are about more than figures on a spreadsheet; budgets are about people. Every budget is a chance to improve lives, lift people out of poverty, provide opportunities for education and employment, and build a better State.
This budget is in every way a missed opportunity. The chance to reset has been passed over in favour of more of the same. The opportunity to build a stronger, fairer economy has been ignored in favour of a status quo which the pandemic has revealed as deeply unfair. If we look at the Premier's track record, it is clear that his last budget as Treasurer is Perrottet from beginning to end: It is ideological, it is focused on the bottom line to the detriment of the people of this State, and it is simply not good enough.
The Premier has continued on that track with the debacle of the Transport Assets Holding Entity, the mismanagement of which this side of Parliament has spent a lot of time uncovering.
How many billions of dollars are taxpayers now on the hook for because of the Premier's mismanagement of TAHE? The Auditor‑General has revealed that they were days away from rejecting parts of the New South Wales Government's 2020‑21 financial accounts, and that rejection was avoided only at the last minute by the New South Wales Government committing taxpayers to fund an additional $5.2 billion to prop up TAHE.
How much social housing could that have built in my and other electorates to deal with housing problems? How many additional classrooms could that have been built to deal with the overcrowding in our schools? How many road extensions could have been built to deal with the traffic bottlenecks being experienced in my electorate? Every day at question time the Premier goes on and on about his Government's economic achievements.
But when I look at asset recycling, TAHE, icare and the failure to deliver basic services to the people in our State who are most in need, I see a Government that has failed to do right by this State. We can do so much better, and we certainly should.