2025-08-07
The revelation that Labor has overseen a fourteen percent increase in people waiting for public housing over six months underlines the fact that their approach to the housing crisis is not working says Deputy Leader of the ACT Greens, Jo Clay.
The news was revealed after questioning from the Greens in Budget Estimates yesterday afternoon. The line of questioning found that the housing waiting list had increased from 2975 to 3402 in the six months between November 2024 and June 2025.
Quotes attributable to Jo Clay, Deputy Leader of the ACT Greens:
“The news that Labor has been sitting on the fact there has been a fourteen percent surge in the public housing waiting list is yet another blow to the credibility of their so-called plan to build more affordable homes in this territory.
“During the election, Labor only committed to building one thousand new public homes by the end of the decade. That’s a clear admission from the Labor Government that they will leave people struggling on the streets given we already know the public housing waiting list is over three-thousand people long.
“The news that the public housing waiting list has grown is no surprise given we know our community has been facing a serious housing crisis for years now. This should be a wakeup call for Labor that their policies which leave thousands of Canberrans out in the cold are not going to cut it—they need to step up to the plate.
“Already during estimates, we’ve heard from numerous community housing providers that the government will not be able to meet their target of five thousand new so-called ‘affordable’ homes—and this news takes that fact one step further.
“The reality is, if Labor was serious about building homes that people can actually afford to live in, they would step in and build enough public homes for every single person on the public housing waiting list—not leave it to the community sector.
“No doubt Labor's hubris will mask this damning announcement as just another quirk of governing, and the government will continue giving handouts to the gambling industry and wasting money on road duplications while people are hungry, homeless and in need of support from a government that has forgotten about them.”