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

As I was saying, this budget contained no new measures for the four million renters who do not receive Commonwealth rent assistance, who continue to face the highest rents on record—rents that keep going up and up. I can tell you who will actually be happy with this budget: property developers, property investors and the banks. They'll be celebrating because this budget dishes out billions in tax handouts for them. But for renters, mortgage holders and first home buyers, it's nothing new. It's nothing but a kick in the teeth while they're already struggling. Negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts were left untouched in this budget. There's been no move by the government to freeze or cap rent increases. It's now beyond clear that Labor have confirmed their approach to the housing crisis: status quo. They're doing absolutely nothing differently. We need a drastic overhaul of our housing system. If we are going to solve this crisis, the government needs to step in and start directly building hundreds of thousands of homes itself, like we actually used to in this country.

My electorate has seen people's rents go up by 18 per cent, on average. Rent in Brisbane is growing the fastest of anywhere in Queensland. It's pushing more and more people into housing stress and making the prospect of homelessness real for countless people. Millions of renters are struggling to keep a roof over their head while the Labor government continues to hand billions in tax handouts to wealthy property investors. We have nurses and teachers, all working full time, actively contributing to community welfare and the economy but unable to live near where they work. This system is fundamentally broken, and I don't know where the government suggests these people go.

What we need to do is stop giving billions to high-income earners through the capital gains tax discount and through negative gearing. These two tax breaks are hugely expensive, costing vastly more than all federal spending on housing and community amenities, including transfers to the states and territories, as well as Commonwealth rent assistance combined. We are forking out billions to wealthy property investors, and it's pushing up house prices and rents and not actually making housing more available or affordable for first home buyers. What's more, these tax breaks are highly regressive. When it was calculated by the Treasury in the 2020-21 period, the top 10 per cent received nearly $13 billion in benefits from these expenditures, more than the bottom 90 per cent combined.

We need ambition if we are going to get out of this housing crisis—ambition that ensures intergenerational fairness. We don't need to reinvent the wheel either; we have plenty of countries around the world to look to as an example of what can be done. We can just look at Sweden, faced with a chronic housing shortfall in the wake of World War II. This shortfall wasn't met with bandaid solutions; it was met with direct government action. The governing Swedish Social Democratic Party at the time set themselves a goal: build one million public homes in 10 years to ensure that all citizens had access to good-quality and affordable homes. And they did it, building a little over a million public homes in a decade. And that is what having ambition can get for us.

Without action like that, the social contract is over in this country. Young people already don't believe the economy works for them, and allowing house prices to soar ever higher will be catastrophic for intergenerational fairness and justice.

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