Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We're in the middle of the worst housing crisis that Australians have faced in generations, and right now we're debating a motion in parliament that lists all the great things that the government has done. It's as if we're telling Australians, 'You don't know how good you've got it.' For all the talk from this Labor government, literally the only things in this motion that are about new direct investment in public and community housing are elements that were won by the Greens in negotiations with Labor. Everything else is either a recycling of coalition era agreements or a misleading of the public about what Labor's games will actually achieve.

On Radio National today we heard the Minister for Housing claim that there was Treasury modelling to demonstrate that the build-to-rent scheme would build 160,000 homes over the next 10 years. However, Treasury officials have admitted in the last week that no modelling exists—zero, nada, none. In fact, experts say that Labor's scheme will give tax handouts to property developers and investors to build expensive apartments they already planned to build.

This would be a sick joke if it weren't so serious right now for the millions of Australians whom Labor refuses to help: the millions of renters who are copping massive rent increases. Many of them are one increase away from eviction into homelessness. What they need is a freeze and cap on rent increases, not more words from Labor. The first home buyers who repeatedly go to auctions and are beaten out by property investors who have tax handouts in their pockets from this Labor government need to be given a chance, need Labor to phase out those tax handouts, not more words from this Labor government.

They talk about people waiting for public housing or growing up in public housing. Well, then, build public housing! Australia is building less public housing now than it has at an any point in its history since World War II. We have a proposal that the government can steal at any point: establish a government-owned developer and then go and get it to build hundreds of thousands of good-quality homes that are then sold and rented at prices people can actually afford. This is how Australia used to do it. It is how countries around the world do it.

The bottom line is this: over the next 10 years, this Labor government is going to give $165 billion in tax handouts to property investors to go to auctions, bid up the price of housing and screw over millions of renters who are trying to buy a home. Imagine if that money went to building public housing instead. How is it fair that there are people out there right now who are skipping meals—pensioners; single mums so that their kids can to eat—so they can afford to cover their rent increases? How is it fair that they have to suffer while property investors get billions of dollars in tax handouts?

The bottom line is this: the Greens are ready and willing to work with the government to develop a housing plan that actually starts to tackle the scale of the crisis. Last year we secured $3 billion of funding for public and community housing. But what we will not accept is a Labor government—75 per cent of whose members are themselves property investors—that is refusing to touch tax handouts for property investors, refusing to invest any more in public housing and refusing to freeze and cap rent increases to give the millions of renters who are doing it tough right now a little bit of relief.

What's most galling and most frustrating about this is that Labor love to pretend that they're doing all they can, as if this housing issue is just so complicated and there's not much more they can do. Why is it, then, that countries around the world can do this? Why is it that they can build enough government-owned housing—and rent it and sell it at affordable prices? Why is it that they have higher rates of homeownership? Why is it that they pay much lower rents? Why is it that countries around the world that are much less wealthy than ours are able to do it? Why is it that, in the 1970s and 1980s, Australia was able to build enough public housing for the people who needed it? It was able to build entire suburbs of good-quality homes that workers were able to move into and build good lives. Why is it that, when Australia was a much less wealthy country with much fewer resources and much less-sophisticated construction technologies, it had the ability to build homes at a faster rate? Why is it that we were able to do it then but we can't do it now?

The bottom line is that Labor are addicted to a neoliberal ideology that is about putting money in the pockets of banks, property investors and property developers and taking it out of the pockets of ordinary renters, mortgage holders and people who are waiting to buy a home and are doing it tough. If you want a sign of how broken this housing crisis is, it is this: last year, as millions of mortgage holders were pushed into financial stress, the Commonwealth Bank recorded a record $10 billion profit. So, while the government is sitting and overseeing a housing system that makes record profits for banks and developers, the rest of us get screwed.

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