Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens stand ready to work collectively and collaboratively across the chamber to assist the government in actually getting something through the Senate this week. The three bills that are the subject of the motion that was attempted to be moved by Senator Birmingham are two non-controversial bills that would pass the Senate and, of course, the Public Interest Disclosure Amendment (Review) Bill, which we stand ready to facilitate passing the Senate in very short order. Our assessment is that that would take 10 or 15 minutes maximum and the government could have those bills through the Senate.

So, when the government is opposing attempts to have these bills put through the Senate, folks need to understand exactly why they are doing that. This is all about the government wanting to ram its housing agenda through the Senate. And I use the word 'agenda' in the loosest possible way, because the Labor Housing Affordability Future Fund is a steaming pile of neoliberal rubbish that does not guarantee the building of one single extra house in this country. Labor's bill, even under the best-case scenario put forward by Labor, that it will deliver 30,000 houses—and there is no guarantee that it will and no reasonable likelihood that it will; it is a fantasy best-case scenario—the demand for affordable housing in Australia will be bigger in five years time than it is today. That's right, folks: Labor's so-called solution will see the affordable housing crisis in this country worse in five years time than it is today. And how's Labor proposing to respond to this massive social crisis? How does this so-called party of the Left—which of course is a masquerade, because they are a centre-right political party and heading further to the right every day—propose to respond to it? By gambling $10 billion of public funds on the stock market.

The Future Fund, the vehicle that Labor wants to give $10 billion worth of public funds to to gamble on the stock market, lost 1.2 per cent of its value last year. Would Labor attempt to respond to a health crisis by gambling public funds on the stock market? Of course they wouldn't. So why are they proposing to take that approach to a housing crisis? And of course this so-called package put forward by Labor does nothing for renters—absolutely zero for renters. We are in a rental crisis in this country. Rents are skyrocketing, particularly in the major cities, but also in regional Australia. We have a Labor Party that in this budget has offered a pittance of $2.85 a day to people who are on income support—using, I might add, people who are in poverty as a tool to fight inflation while they are delivering the massively inflationary quarter of a trillion dollars in stage 3 tax cuts for the top end. That's what's happening here, and there is nothing for renters. There is nothing for renters in this housing affordability proposal from Labor.

In my home state of Tasmania, Tasmanians are being conned by the Jacqui Lambie Network, who are claiming that it is in the legislation that a minimum of 1,200 new homes will be built in Tasmania over the next five years, when it is not in the legislation; it's not in any of the amendments that have been circulated by the government. Yet Senator Lambie and Senator Tyrrell are colluding with the government to try to smash through a bill that doesn't guarantee that a single extra house will be built in Tasmania. Isn't it astonishing that the Labor Party would prefer to see its bill fail in this chamber today than to sit down and have a genuine negotiation with the Australian Greens?

The Labor Party needs to understand that it doesn't control this Senate, and I urge them to sit down and negotiate a decent outcome for people who are struggling with rental crisis, struggling with the housing crisis, so we can move forward and address those issues.