David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023. At the outset, I want to commend the work that the member for Griffith has done over months and months on this bill in building pressure on the government. We call him the member for Griffith in this place, but he was referred to last week as 'that bloke Max from Queensland who has really got under the Prime Minister's skin'. I think that would be a fair summary of the campaign that's been run by him, his team, the Greens in this place and the thousands and thousands of Australians across this country who've knocked on doors, sent emails to their politicians, talked to their neighbours, talked to their friends and demanded more than what Labor first put on the table with this HAFF bill.

We should be clear about one thing: the bill that was first introduced by Labor was a shocker. It wasn't going to even touch the sides of the national housing crisis. The original plan from Labor was literally to borrow $10 billion and then invest it in everything other than housing. They were going to borrow $10 billion, whack it on the stock market and then roll the dice for the tens and tens of thousands of people in the queues for public housing—for the millions of Australians in housing crisis. They were going to roll the dice on the stock exchange and, if the stock exchange gave a positive return, then some of that might have been spent on housing. But if it gave a negative return, then not $1 would be spent on this national housing crisis. That was Labor's first draft of the HAFF bill, and of course we weren't going to support that—of course we weren't going to vote that through.

Nobody—except, maybe, the coalition—ever says about education expenditure that you should only invest in education if you borrow some money, whack it on the stock market and it gives a positive return. We don't fund public hospitals by gambling borrowed money on the stock market, so of course we shouldn't be dealing with a housing crisis that way. So we said no, and we said, with the support of millions of Australians, that there's a housing crisis and that you need to do better. Lift the game; give a guaranteed investment of serious money for public housing, and then address the rental crisis that's also gripping the country.

For months and months, we got told by Labor that the Prime Minister has no power to address rents, that the Prime Minister is powerless. He'd love to help but just doesn't have the constitutional power. This is the same Prime Minister who, at the end of last year, convened a national crisis meeting to cap energy prices. He had the power to convene a meeting of the National Cabinet to cap energy prices. We rushed in here, quite rightly, before Christmas to pass emergency legislation to cap energy prices. But suddenly, when it came to taking on the property industry and the developers, Prime Minister Albanese said: 'I have no power. I can't do it—can't touch it. It's all too hard. We have to leave it to the states and territories.' It's not good enough from the Prime Minister in the face of a national crisis to just put your hands up and say that you haven't got the power.

The pressure grew for more funding for public housing—not just for a gambled return on the stock market but for guaranteed funding. We're here today, as Greens, backing in this bill because that pressure has worked. It's confirmation that having the numbers in this place for the balance of power, combined with the support of the millions of Australians who are demanding that their government step up and sort out the housing crisis, works. It delivers on what the community needs. We have the backing of that grassroots movement, where we get out there, knock on doors and talk to people one-on-one about how there should be far more hope in politics and how the Prime Minister should actually get out and do stuff, not put his hands up and surrender to the property developers and the market. When you speak face-to-face with people who are doing it tough, you hear their demands. We tell them, 'Actually, politics can make a difference.'

And it has made a difference, because we've now secured $3 billion of upfront spending on public housing—$3 billion! We secured $2 billion just at the start of this financial year. Prime Minister Albanese said, 'Oh, that should be enough to get the Greens across the line.' We said: 'It's not enough. It doesn't address the scale of the crisis.' We said: 'There needs to be guaranteed funding every year. Don't gamble it on the stock market. There needs to be guaranteed funding every year and more funds for public housing. And what about the rental crisis?' And then, just in the last week, we've nailed that extra billion dollars for public housing—not in 2024 or 2025 or 2028, but an extra billion right now to build homes for people who can't afford the rent and to get people off those public waiting lists that people literally die on while waiting for a home. That is $3 billion in direct investment in social, public and affordable housing because we said no to a crap deal and no to the rubbish initial draft of the HAFF, and we said it together with thousands and thousands of Australians.

There's often a sense amongst political insiders that Labor should just be allowed to deliver their proposals unchanged as if they have some sort of unique mandate. They received just a tick over a third of the popular vote, but somehow Labor come in with their puffed-up arrogance and say that they're the only ones that can be trusted on progressive legislation, and then they deliver something like the HAFF Bill, which is a gamble on the stock market and not a serious attack on a national crisis. We're told by some of those political insiders that we should just pass whatever Labor has put on the table because it won't get any better and, if we don't accept their initial crappy offer, it will all be taken off the table. What rubbish that proved to be! Today, as we vote through this bill, having secured an extra $3 billion in upfront funding and having guaranteed at least $500 million every year going forward, taking the gamble on the stock market out of this bill, it proves that that political analysis of holding Labor to account and doing it with millions of Australians on your side actually works.

To the renters out there, who I'm sure are still deeply disappointed by a prime minister who says that he's powerless and by a bill that's not addressing the rental crisis, we say that we know it's still too hard, and we know that we shouldn't live in a country where unlimited rent increases are legal. We'll keep fighting. This is not a one-bill campaign. As long as the housing crisis continues, the Greens will continue this work. That bloke Max from Queensland will continue this work with the support of all my colleagues in this place and the other place and with the support of millions of Australians behind us. We've seen just how hard it is to drag Labor to the left to do the right, progressive thing—to put the money up to start addressing some of the serious social and environmental crises we have in this country. But we've seen that that pressure works, and we're committed to keeping that pressure up for renters too.

So we're here at what I think is a critical point in politics on this. It's interesting to hear the coalition's attack on this final package. The coalition's attack is that we shouldn't give any hope to people on public housing lists and that we shouldn't give any hope to renters because, if we put any money into the actual construction of public housing, we're somehow going to create inflationary pressures and supply constraints. They say that we shouldn't do anything because it's all too hard. 'Don't interfere with the market; let the market magically fix it for renters and people who don't have a home and are couch surfing and living in their car. Let the market decide!' It's one of the most cruel analyses that I've ever seen—to say to a family that's living in a car: 'We can't help you. Just let the market decide.' That's the coalition's solution: 'The dead hand of the market may at some point construct something in the future, and we're not going to lift a hand to build public housing or support affordable housing.' That is like political cruelty distilled by the coalition, utter base political cruelty. To let people in a country as wealthy as Australia go without a home because of your ideological commitment to the market or maybe because of cosy relationship with the property industry that you don't want to get in the way of is just plain cruel.

We live in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet and we have a per capita wealth now that is a multiple of what we had in the forties, fifties and sixties, when everyone in this country had a home. We had a federal government then that said, 'If the market is not building people's homes, we will.' They built public homes in suburbs in my hometown of Sydney. Whole suburbs were constructed by public funding in the forties, fifties and sixties to give people not just some shoebox in an apartment but homes that they still want to live in now, decent homes, secure homes. We did that when we had a fraction of the wealth that we do now.

We did that in large part through major investment from the Commonwealth government. But now we have had this ideological takeover by the Labor Party. They say that, without pressure from the Greens and the community, their only method of putting money into public housing is to gamble it through the stock market. What went wrong with Labor in the last 60 years? They went from direct investment and building public housing on a nationwide scale, where there was a commitment to giving everyone who needed it a home to their initial draft of the HAFF bill, where they would roll the money on the stock market. What went wrong? It's part of the ideological takeover in this place. There is a resistance to seeing the federal government act on a national crisis and invest in public assets for the public good, because that is the ultimate solution for housing.

Yes, let's get the bill passed. Let's see $3 billion freed up this year to build a surge of public and affordable housing but then let's commit together as a parliament not to hand over to some cruel market ideology people's homes and the security for their family but invest in public housing with public money, with the wealth that only this parliament can give to a key national crisis. And while we're building those homes, let's build that national consensus to put caps on rentals, to make it illegal to have unlimited rent increases and to build the spanners from both sides so that a decade from now we can look back on this moment and say, 'That is when politics changed. It was 2023 when we took away from that 20, 30 years of ideological attack on public housing and the public services. From 2023 we changed politics so that everyone in this country, every family, every mum, dad and kid had a safe home.'