The Labor government has a blind spot when it comes to fixing the unique challenges of housing in regional Australia. The $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund—the government’s signature housing policy—has completely ignored the specific problems in regional, rural and remote Australia and failed to guarantee dedicated funding. Regional Australians, who feel they will never have a stable place to live, deserve more.

This month, I attended the National Regional Housing Summit, held at Old Parliament House, here in Canberra. The event, organised by the Regional Australia Institute, brought together leading voices on the housing crisis from across regional, rural and remote Australia. I thank the Regional Australia Institute very much for their leadership in doing this.

As a regional Independent, I was inspired to hear from like-minded people and organisations, who are telling the federal and state governments to do better on regional housing. That’s because regional Australia is in a housing crisis. Across the country, prices are higher than they’ve ever been, availability is at its lowest in decades and new builds are taking longer to complete. For so many families across regional Australia, interest rate rises and rent rises are making balancing the family budget harder than they’ve ever........

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