Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Governments have begun to speak more and more about affordable housing, but their definition of the term 'affordable' shows that they are really living in another world. The south-east region of Queensland draft plan, announced just last week, is an ambitious plan to build 900,000 new homes by 2046, with 20 per cent of them to be earmarked as affordable. That sounds great on paper, but, unfortunately, their way of defining 'affordable housing' is like something out of a utopia. Under this plan, a nurse on $90,000 a year paying $515 a week for a unit would be a measure of success under South-East Queensland's new population planning. If paying off HECS, this means rent would make up 42 per cent of this nurse's income. In addition, Queensland's Deputy Premier said that the bulk of the 20 per cent affordability target will be delivered by the market at market prices. But the issue is the market and market prices.

This plan typifies the approach Australian governments at the state and federal levels have towards the housing crisis. Their plans are piecemeal and will not address the systemic barriers everyday Australians face in finding a safe and affordable place to call home. This South-East Queensland draft plan is yet another example of a government essentially admitting defeat and an acknowledgement that they are just carrying out the agenda of property investors.

As the member for Brisbane I have consistently heard from renters who are only one rent increase away from eviction. Many are hesitant to ask for basic repairs and maintenance out of fear that their lease just won't be renewed if they do. The electoral division of Brisbane has close to a 55 per cent renter population and has the second-youngest demographic of any electorate in Australia. The housing crisis is hitting my community hard, and many of my constituents are experiencing acute and chronic financial and housing stress.

I've been a renter ever since I moved out of my family home 12 years ago. Over this time I have lived in townhouses, in share houses and, with my partner, in apartments. These rentals have been all across Brisbane and on both sides of the Brisbane River. My rent has increased by 22 per cent in the past two years, following the trend that has been experienced across Brisbane, where rents have increased by an average of 27 per cent over the past two years. If I was still working in my previous job, in retail, I would not have been able to afford these increases. My partner and I would have had to join the thousands of Brisbane residents who are trying to find a rental that won't blow their budget.

It is now an expectation in the market that renters will apply for properties, sight unseen, and that they will also engage in rent bidding. Many of these practices are actually illegal in Queensland, yet the state government is doing nothing to enforce these laws, again benefiting investors at the expense of those seeking housing. I have also heard horror stories about rents being increased by up to $400 per week, as landlords and agents seeks to cash in on housing insecurity, the threat of homelessness and a market that is very poorly regulated. Stories like these have been reported publicly in Brisbane and across national media. We hear stories of real estate agents encouraging landlords to increase rents by extreme amounts to make as much profit as possible off people who are suffering. Landlords and real estate agents feel empowered to impose extreme rent increases on people, despite properties being in poor condition, because our country's economic and housing system has been orientated to ensure that landlords and investors always win and that renters always lose.

We know there are solutions out there. The Greens have a plan to ensure all Australians have a safe and affordable roof over their heads. For months we have sought to reach a compromise with Labor to pass a bill that will actually start to tackle the scale of this housing crisis. We have two key demands: immediately push for a freeze on rent increases, through National Cabinet, by offering $1 billion a year in extra funding which states could use to purchase affordable homes right away; and a guaranteed minimum spend of $2.5 billion per year on public, community and affordable housing, starting right now. And our key demands are enormously popular. According to polling from the Australia Institute released just a couple of days ago, almost nine in 10 Australians support more money being spent directly on affordable housing, and three-quarters want the federal government to work with the states and territories to implement rent caps across the country.

The federal Labor government has a clear choice: do what the nation is calling out for—to work with the Greens to improve this bill—and actually make a dent in the housing crisis, or walk away from the millions of people crying out for public and genuinely affordable housing. I will keep fighting in this place for my constituents and to end the housing and rental crisis.

The petroleum resource rent tax, or PRRT, was introduced in 1987 as a means of collecting, on behalf of the Australian people, a fair share of petroleum profits—or at least that's what it's supposed to do. The PRRT is forecast to raise just $2.1 billion in 2024-25, and $2 billion in 2025-26. This would mean that, in 2025-26, PRRT revenue would be worth just 0.08 per cent of GDP, around half the level that was raised from the PRRT during the early to mid 2000s.

Australia has now become the world's largest seaborne exporter of gas. However, the PRRT is so ineffectual at taxing gas that, according to the Treasury department, the record exports coming from the massive terminals dotted across Australia's west, north-east and northern coastline have so far generated no tax revenue. The PRRT was originally designed to capture income from oil and gas projects. Because of the differences in investment and processing of liquefied natural gas, this tax has simply failed to keep pace with the fundamental changes in Australia's hydrocarbon production.

While the gas industry in this country booms, the petroleum resource rent tax does not. Australians are missing out on revenue that could be used to fund vital services and benefits—revenue which could help with crucial investment in the transition to a zero emissions economy. The gas sector is massively increasing Australia's emissions and it should be paying its fair share to help reduce them. The planned changes to the PRRT will only raise an additional $2.4 billion over five years. The government is short-changing Australians. Our resources are being snatched up and sent overseas, and we are not seeing anything substantial for it.

There is a better path that we can take. We don't have to start from scratch either. Take Norway for example. Since 1996 Norway has been taxing the profits of its oil and gas sector at 78 per cent and it still mines fossil fuels, so the fear campaign that we hear—'If we tax these corporations, they will just move offshore'—is completely the stuff of fairytales. Norway's Minister of Finance projects that tax revenue from oil and gas will be a staggering A$127 billion this year. That works out to be around $23,500 per Norwegian citizen in one year.

Meanwhile, Australia's oil and gas industry receives billions of dollars worth of taxpayer funded subsidies, yet the gigantic surge in revenue to the industry has not resulted in an anywhere near similar jump in tax revenue. All the while Australians are facing some of the highest prices in the world for gas. We are being taken for a ride.

Labor now has a very clear choice—work constructively with the Greens to double the proposed additional revenue from gas companies or settle for half that amount in exchange for weakening environmental regulations for gas projects to the satisfaction of the Dutton opposition. With Australia's oil and gas companies making record windfall profits the government needs to urgently change how the industry is taxed to ensure Australians get a fair share of the returns from our resources.

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