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

This is why we need a freeze and cap on rent increases. The majority of the Labor and Liberal parties might all be landlords and so might not fully appreciate the scale of the housing crisis and the impact it's having on renters, but, over the last 12 months alone, rents have increased in capital cities by 9.5 per cent. The national median rent is now $621 a week. That means that, even if you're earning $107,000 a year, in the median rental you'll still be in rental stress. The worst rent increases have been in the lowest-priced rentals. That means that, for the bottom 25 per cent of income earners, the average income they are paying on their rent is 54 per cent. In other words, the lowest 25 per cent of income earners are paying over half their income on rent.

To give you an idea of the consequences of the government's refusal to put a freeze and cap on rental increases: a single mum got in touch with us—a DV survivors with a daughter on the NDIS. They've lived in the same rental for nine years. In the past 12 months, the rent has increased 20.8 per cent, up by $544 a month. She says that some days her children go without basics so she can just make the rent and they don't end up on the streets. The government knows that a freeze and cap on rent increases would work. In their own report, guess the region that has the lowest rent increases in the world right now? Europe. It's also the place with caps and freezes on rents.