Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I move –
That the House take note of the following matter: short‑stay accommodation.
Housing is a human right and the Tasmanian Government is currently failing to deliver on its responsibilities and obligations to house Tasmanians adequately. Housing stress is significant and it delivers significant pain. There are relationship impacts.
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER – I ask members not to have conversations while a member is on their feet addressing the House?
Mr BAYLEY – There are relationship impacts. There are education impacts. It leads to homelessness and you need to only walk around after parliament in this city and see people camped on the Domain at the Hobart Rivulet.
There is a whole lot of elements to housing policy failure that we can and need to talk about, and that we do talk about in here. We need rental controls. We need to end no cause evictions. We need minimum standards for rental properties. Where are the pets in rentals bill?
The government data also demonstrates it is consistently failing to meet its own targets in relation to building social and affordable housing, and it fudges the figures by including vacant land, crisis units, affordable rentals, and affordable home purchases.
Putting that aside, I want to talk today about short‑stay accommodation because we hear so much from this government and federal politicians about supply. When it comes to short‑stay accommodation, we are talking about a massive impact on supply. Short‑stay accommodation and the loss of whole home rentals to the Airbnb market. For all the talk of supply, there is simply no action when it comes to short‑stay and it is actively stripping homes out of the market.
The latest statistics indicate that 1000 homes have been lost to Airbnb in the last four years. Roughly, since the last election, the Consumer Building and Occupational Services (CBOS) data from the first quarter of 2024 show that there has been a 4.6 per cent increase in whole homes listed for short‑stay in that latest reporting period through our 7630 short‑stay properties listed in the CBOS data. 49 per cent – 3000 ‑ are not listed as primary residences, meaning there are whole homes that could have been lost to the rental market – 49 per cent, that is 3773 houses. This has delivered city and regional impacts.
In Hobart, 35 per cent of short‑stay listings are whole homes. In Launceston, it is 54 per cent. Anecdotally, we know from tourism operators and primary producers that people in the regions are struggling to find accommodation for their staff in those areas.
Since the election, we have heard some concerning rhetoric from a lot of people, including Labor Party MPs, about short‑stay accommodation. We have not heard much from them recently about their long standing policy when it comes to short‑stay. My question to Labor today is to be really clear with us about what your policy is. I hope you can clarify this straight away by saying that nothing in relation to your policy that you took to the last election has changed.
We are still absolutely committed to the policy of pausing new home short‑stay conversions and we hope that the Labor Party is too. It would certainly be really good news if the policies change. What is it?
For other members in the House, we would be really interested in hearing your policy for short stay accommodation, because in a collaborative parliament, we have huge opportunities.
Just to be completely clear, the Greens strongly oppose Airbnbs ripping homes away from Tasmanians and our policy is to ban new short‑stay accommodation in residential zones, to phase out existing permits, to make it discretionary in non-residential zones. That is going make a real difference to this terrible situation. At the least, we are hoping to see if there is some pathway forward in some kind of reform, in terms of dealing this in this parliament.
Every year, hundreds of homes are being ripped out of the rental market and converted to Airbnbs. It is no wonder that we have seen rent skyrocket, homelessness increase faster than anywhere else in the nation, and the public housing wait list spiral out of control.
The Liberal Government has consistently refused to do anything about the proliferation of Airbnbs and that is a black mark on their record. They are responsible for the huge social consequences resulting from that situation, but in this parliament, the Liberals do not always get their way. It would seem at face value that there is a possibility for reform, genuine reform that we want. We, Greens, want it and as I understand, the crossbenchers do too. If Labor has their position that is consistent with the one that they took to the election, there is an opportunity to pause whole home conversions to short‑stay accommodation.
We need to hear that clearly and we need to take action because this is an issue that is impacting Tasmanians right across the state. It is driving people into homelessness and it needs to end.
