The Courier Mail reported this week, “new tent cities have been set-up near some of Brisbane’s busiest intersections, as Queensland emerges as the “epicentre” of the housing crisis.

I have visited large tent cities in South Brisbane, Mackay and Townsville, and seen smaller tent cities in too many provincial centres to list.

In speaking with those residents I was horrified to find just how many were families with children.

Mum and dad may both have jobs, but without a home for their children, one parent had to give up working to look after their kids because a tent is no place for a child.

In August 2020 the national average rent was $437 a week.  It’s now $627, an increase of 40% over just a few years.

The national rental vacancy rate is at just 1% which is far below the 3% rate that’s considered a healthy market.

In 1987 the average house cost 2.8 times the average income.

Today, a house is 9.7 times.

So many young people contact my office, these are Australians who have done everything society asked of them.

They have studied hard, stayed out of trouble, got a university degree and now have a good job, only to find they were lied to.

Real wages in Australia are back to 2010 levels while houses are twice as expensive as they were in 2010.

One Nation’s housing policy looks to the future, offering common-sense solutions to help more Australians purchase their own home, while at the same time, reducing rent.

One Nation’s housing policy includes

- Lower immigration to sustainable levels to reduce housing demand.

- Ban foreign ownership of residential property to increase housing supply.

- Allow a portion of your superannuation to be invested in a home purchase.

- Ditch Labor’s Housing Future Fund and invest those funds into creating a new People’s Mortgage Scheme, offering 5% deposit and 5% interest rate.

- Allow people with a HECS debt to roll their debt into a People’s Mortgage account, improving their ability to obtain and service a housing loan.

- Implement a 5-year moratorium on charging GST on the materials used in new home construction, which will make new homes more affordable, taking $1.4bn off the sale price of new homes over the next 4 years.

One Nation’s housing policy will get young Australians into their own home, even those with a HECS debt preventing saving for their own home.

It’s time for new ideas, it’s time for One Nation.