Vikki Campion: People forced to live in parks while surge in migrants exacerbates housing crisis

Asked whether migrants flooding into Australia have worsened the housing crisis and forced even more people to live on the streets, our PM chose to wax lyrical about the parties he can throw in the taxpayer-funded Lodge, writes Vikki Campion.

As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese opined in parliament about the parties he is hosting at the Lodge, in response to a question on the housing crisis, an unhoused man in lesser circumstances heats two-minute noodles in a kettle on a barbecue plate at a playground.

We are in a playground in one of the most affordable regional cities in the country. They used to say if you couldn’t make it here, you couldn’t make it anywhere.

On my headphones, Treasurer Jim Chalmers is spruiking the jobs figures as “absolutely remarkable”.

In the playground, the ramen cook’s entire pantry is spread out before us. The stark reality of a meagre existence involuntarily imposed on him.

“More people are working, more people are earning more and more people will be keeping more of what they earn as well,” Dr Chalmers tells the parliament.

At the barbecue, the jug of the Australian man sleeping in his car starts to boil. He fries onion and opens a can of sardines. This is lunch, breakfast, and dinner. He works as much as possible and does the jobs others don’t want, he says, head down, as if ashamed, needlessly.

No one here is judging.

A homeless man with his cooking oven at his camp in a park near Melbourne last year. Picture: Ian Currie

We watch, not because we’re afraid of this mild-mannered, shyly spoken fellow cooking at a playground because he doesn’t have a house, but because we’re all one or two missteps away from sharing his kitchen.

Rentals are joining housing as nostalgia for times past; meanwhile, 150,000 extra people have arrived in three months at our shores.

Twice the size of the city this park is in, where mums sip homemade tea from a Thermos, juggling kids and a couple of casual jobs.

A $6.50 latte is an extravagance now, when the quarterly energy bill is $1600 and to truck half a tank of water is $550, on top of the mortgage, interest rates and $500 grocery bill.

Question Time voices droning in one ear tell me how good we have it.

That used to be true, especially in Tamworth, which remains one of the most “affordable” cities in a country where thriving is for the few and surviving for the rest.

Tents at another park providing shelter to people who are homeless. Picture: Dan Peled

Michael Sukkar, the shadow housing minister, asks the Prime Minister if the ABS stats show Labor’s housing crisis is worsening, with overseas arrivals now running at four times the rate of new home builds.

This is what the Prime Minister says in reply: “I join with members of parliament in welcoming the UK minister here. I look forward to welcoming Minister Shapps to the Lodge later today, along with Minister Cameron, the foreign minister. We will be hosting the AUKMIN dedication there later this evening before they head to Adelaide for what will be a very important meeting. I look forward to hearing the feedback about your trip to Osborne. I was able to host the High Commissioner just on Tuesday evening as well to get a briefing about the relationship between Australia and the UK, of which the AUKUS arrangements and our Defence relationship is so important.”

Why discuss our housing crisis when you can prattle on about life at the Lodge?

Our houseless public park chef on the ramen diet showers down at a public pool, which is okay for now, but soon it will close for winter. After that, he doesn’t know.

Another cabinet minister, Anika Wells, claims a lowly paid aged-care worker can take out a mortgage on an apartment because under Labor her pay went up. She doesn’t dare guess how long she can keep paying if the cost of living continues to balloon.

The federal government’s approach to homelessness and the housing crisis is to pack people into sleeping bags in their cars and tents on street corners, footpaths and parklands, and in high-rise unit building surfing couches while they keep the doors to the nation wide open.

This week’s ABS population data shows net overseas migration increasing by 60 per cent in the year to September. Of our annual population growth, 83 per cent is overseas migration.

Soon, the frosts will start. New England nights in a car will become untenable, but the PM will still host his influential acquaintances at impressive parties at the Lodge.

Got a news tip? Email [e-mail]