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

My question is to the Treasurer. Skyrocketing rents, increasing at close to twice the rate of inflation, and corporate price gouging are driving inflation and threatening homeowners and renters with another interest rate rise. Treasurer, instead of allowing the Reserve Bank to hit people with another interest rate hike, why don't you show leadership and work with national cabinet to impose a rent freeze and cap, and make price gouging illegal?

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Moreton is warned.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Griffith has got a lot of nerve asking this question today, having just teamed up in the Senate with the coalition—with the conservatives—to knock off tens of thousands of rental properties to help fix the problem that we have with housing supply in this country. Now, if the Greens political party really cared about building more homes then they would have voted for the tax break that would have built tens of thousands of homes for people to rent.

This is the hypocrisy at the very, very core of the Greens' political party when they keep teaming up with the conservatives in the Senate and the House of Representatives to prevent this country building more houses that our people desperately need.

The consequence of your vote in the Senate today could be 10060,000 fewer homes for homeless people and young people to rent. If you really gave a stuff about homelessness in this country, you would vote for the policies that would build more housing supply in this country and you wouldn't conduct this ridiculous, underhanded, hypocritical campaign which sees you vote more frequently with them than with us to build the homes that you pretend you want to see in our local communities.

If the member for Griffith and his Greens colleagues really cared about homelessness, if they really cared about rental pressures, they would vote with the Labor government to build more properties in this country for people to rent, and every time they don't do that, they lay bare what's really going on here. They are much, much more interested in fighting Labor in the inner cities than they are in fighting for more homes for young people and the homeless.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Treasurer and the member for Griffith will cease interjecting.

The member for Spence is warned.