Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the housing bills—the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill 2023 and the Treasury Laws Amendment (Housing Measures No. 1) Bill 2023. We're in a housing crisis, and I hope that's now abundantly clear to everyone in this chamber, as it has been abundantly clear to everyone in the community for quite some time now. Our party thinks that housing is a human right, yet we are facing staggering numbers of people without a home. The rates of homelessness are skyrocketing, the rates of rent rises are skyrocketing and, as we've just heard from the previous speaker, young people have given up hope of ever being able to own a home. They're now struggling to pay the rent, let alone to consider owning a home. We are in a full-blown housing crisis. We know that it is touching people that have previously not experienced such precariousness. We know that it's hurting single parents, women and children fleeing domestic violence, young people, older people and people on inadequate pensions. This crisis is touching so many people.

It's against this backdrop, I might add, that we have a $39 billion yearly commitment to retain the tax perks that go to property speculators and investors—$39 billion, just in this current financial year, that this government will continue to spend on people who have five, six, seven or 18 investment properties. I'm flagging that we will come for you on that issue. We maintain that that is a very poor spend that is actually worsening the housing crisis and clearly deepening the inequality in housing.

It was against this backdrop that about nine months ago the government proposed the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill, which we're coming back to debate today. The structure proposed by the government was not direct spending on housing, such as you would have for schools or hospitals. It was this complicated arrangement whereby a new body would gamble some money on the stock market and if that gamble paid off and there were some profits then some of that money, up to $500 million but not more, could be spent on housing. What a sham structure! It's exactly why the Greens said not only that this was inadequate but that it was a poorly designed process for funding what is a fundamental human right, which is the right to have a roof over your head.

So we held out and we pushed for more. We came under some fairly strong criticism for doing that, and not just from the people in this place. There were others who were urging us to just pass this bill. Certainly the crossbench were saying: 'Oh, this is a good start. Just get on with it.' Well, fast-forward nine months to yesterday, when the Greens were able to extract $3 billion in direct funding for social and affordable housing from this government as a result of our negotiations. That is tens of thousands of people who will now have a roof over their heads and would not have got that were it not for us having strong negotiations and holding the line for as long as we did. So I want to commend Greens leader Adam Bandt MP and our housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather MP from my home state of Queensland, for driving what was a strong and powerful negotiation that has landed in a good place. We are proud that so many more people now will be able to have the benefit of a roof over their heads, which they would not have had we folded to the demands of some others that we simply wave through this inadequate piece of legislation.

So we now have an additional $3 billion of direct funding to go to build social and affordable housing. Of course, $2 billion of that was announced with the Social Housing Accelerator a couple of months back, and then just yesterday a further $1 billion was announced by the Prime Minister as a result of negotiation with the Greens. This is in addition, of course, to the agreement to have a minimum spend of $500 million from the Housing Australia Future Fund, even if the gamble on the stock market doesn't pay off for you that year. What we've really shown is that pressure works. We have secured an additional $3 billion for social and affordable homes, building thousands of homes for low-income renters, and we will now allow the HAFF to pass through the Senate this sitting week.

We always asked for two things. We asked for a decent amount of spend on social and affordable homes, and we've secured that: $3 billion. But we also asked for action to protect renters. Nationally, we have seen rents increase by 24 per cent in the last 12 months. That is astronomical. We are hearing so many anecdotes as we doorknock, from the legions of people that we've spoken with in recent months. There are many horror stories of people who might have been expecting a little bit of a rent increase but are now being hit with hundreds of dollars of rent increases by their landlords and who are simply not able to pay that increase. People are facing homelessness because of the profiteering of landlords who are increasing rents beyond what they need to to cover costs—remembering that we subsidise them with negative gearing already. This is making the homelessness crisis worse, and it is increasing the waiting list for social housing, which is already at 640,000 nationally. It's at least 50,000 in my home state of Queensland. Our policy settings have to date been making this problem worse, and real people are suffering as a result. Unlimited rent rises should be illegal.

We pushed the government on this. This has now become a national conversation because so many people are feeling this in the real world. But never before has National Cabinet had to debate tenants' rights and rental rises. We are proud to have ensured that National Cabinet, the Prime Minister and all the premiers and chief ministers sat around the table and talked about who's got responsibility and what should be done to address the rental crisis. Unfortunately, whilst the pressure engineered that meeting to occur, the results of the meeting were pretty flimsy. Many of the announcements that were made simply built upon what states and territories were already doing and made some small tweaks, but we don't have a rent freeze nationally. We don't have rent caps, and we don't have a plan from the federal government to make unlimited rent rises illegal. I've heard the government say in other contexts that, when a crisis is a national one, it deserves national attention. It seems that they only say that selectively. What they've said about rents is basically that rents are not their problem—'This is a state and territory matter'—and, yet, you cannot have both things true at the same time. If on other matters you're saying the crisis is so great that it deserves a national response, why are you not accepting that we are in a national rental crisis and that the federal government should do more? At the very least, you could incentivise the states and use that gentle pressure.

It is wall-to-wall Labor governments on the mainland. You're all on the same team. Don't tell me that the Prime Minister doesn't have any power to shape national policy, to coordinate and collaborate with and to incentivise the states and territories to stop unlimited rent rises, make them illegal and bring in some meaningful standards for tenants—not the wishy-washy commitment to running water that National Cabinet came out with. Really? Is that the level of expectation that renters can expect from this government—a commitment to running water? You would hope that it wouldn't require a National Cabinet meeting to guarantee running water for tenants. We need so much stronger standards for tenants. We need to investigate longer leases. We need to make those no-grounds evictions rules nationwide and consistent. Wouldn't it be nice to have a right to a pet, as a tenant? We know how good for mental health having an animal companion is. Wouldn't it be good if we could have some national standards relating to that? There is so much that the federal government could do to respond to the rental crisis that we are facing. And yet, we have nada. There was only the most minimal outcome from the National Cabinet meeting.

I say to the government: we will keep pushing for a rent freeze. We will keep pushing to make unlimited rent rises illegal. We do think it's your job as the federal government, particularly when all the state and territory governments on the mainland are from your political party, to address this crisis. Moreover, people out there think it's your job to address this crisis. People out there are really feeling the pain of the stratospheric rent increases that they've faced in the last 12 months. They know now that there's someone in this parliament fighting for them. We have put renters' rights on the agenda nationally, and we will keep fighting for an outcome. We were not able to get it this time around, but there's more legislation coming. We have warned the government—and I am doing so again today—that we will be using our power in this place to fight for renters. You should be doing the same. This shouldn't be a political issue, but someone has got to fight for renters. I would hope that you would all do that, but we're the ones pushing for it, and, until such time as you come to the party, be warned: people are not happy, and people expect better from you. They changed the government, they wanted a change of policy, they wanted their material concerns addressed, and they're deeply disappointed and underwhelmed by what they've seen so far from this new government.

This is an invitation to the government to seriously consider those rental reforms that we are proposing, because they're what people deserve, they're what they want and this is really a human rights issue. In a wealthy country like ours, it is appalling that we can't see the opportunity here for the government of the day to help out renters, who are one-third of the population. I might add that this is the same government that's spending—what is it?—$500 billion now on nuclear submarines. It used to be $300-and-something billion, and we got it re-costed. It's half a trillion dollars now on nuclear submarines. You can find money for that. Stage three tax cuts are $300-and-something billion over 10 years now. Again, you're not poor when it comes to those things—weapons of war and tax cuts for the rich—but you're too poor to do something about renters and too poor to put in a decent amount of money to build social and affordable homes in a way that would end the waiting list, in a way that would ensure that everyone in this wealthy country of ours can have a roof over their heads.

We know the horror stories about people living in cars, people living in tents, people who are one rent rise away from that precarious situation. This is an eminently fixable issue, and we again urge the government to get on with it and fix it, and we warn you that we will not let up on this. The fight is just beginning, and we have legions of people out there who are backing us on this and who deserve a better outcome from their government.

With that, I move the second reading amendment on sheet 2109 that's just been circulated in my name in the chamber:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) Australia is in the middle of a rental crisis, and

(ii) Labor had the power and opportunity to freeze and cap rent increases through National Cabinet, but refused despite the fact Labor holds government federally and in every state and territory on the mainland; and

(b) agrees that every rent rise from here on out is Labor's fault and that unlimited rent rises should be illegal; and

(c) calls on the Federal Labor Government to coordinate a 2-year freeze on rent increases, followed by ongoing caps of 2%, through National Cabinet".

I also flag that Senator Faruqi does not wish to proceed with her second reading amendment, so I withdraw that on her behalf.

In the remaining time allotted to me, I want to share, if I have time, some of the horrific stories that we heard from renters through the Senate inquiry into the rental crisis, which the Greens were proud to spearhead and which has been going around the country giving a platform to people who've felt voiceless until now and felt that no-one in here was representing them, until they heard that the Greens were fighting for them. I probably don't have time to share the full testimony, but in Brisbane, in my home state of Queensland—or Meanjin, as it's also known—a lady called Jo gave evidence to the Senate inquiry and said:

I grew up in a family violence situation alongside my sister, and we sought help from the police, Centrelink and our university, but we didn't receive protection. Our abuser completely controlled our lives financially, emotionally and physically well into our 20s. In 2022, I fled Queensland when he threatened to kill me. I had just achieved a first-class honours degree. I'm not telling you this because I want you to feel sorry for me, but I do need you to understand that that experience is accompanied by a raft of financial penalties, from taking out a $30,000 HECS loan which enabled us to lessen the impact of the financial abuse, to routinely paying for treatment for complex post-traumatic stress disorder and physical injuries. …

This situation has cost me far more than the deposit on a home. Over time, the financial burden has accumulated, not least because I'm beholden to a housing market that unfairly prioritises investors. The abuse that I've managed for most of my life only ended last year …

And she goes on and tells the story of financial abuse and manipulation.

Jo was just one of the submitters to that inquiry. There were many in Brisbane. There were many around the country. These are real people. They expect action on the rental crisis and they expect a government to deliver on making unlimited rent rises illegal, and that's what the Greens will continue to push to achieve.