Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Australia is in a housing crisis. Australia is in a rental crisis. Millions and millions of Australians are suffering incredibly because of this. I've just been to a briefing by food relief charities, who tell me there is a massive increase in the number of people accessing their food relief who have never had to access food relief before. Why? Because they cannot afford to live and because, when it comes to the essentials of life—particularly, paying their rent and paying their mortgages—they can't afford to pay for anything else. They can't afford to pay for their medications. They can't afford to put shoes on their kids' feet. Food has now become the discretionary item. That's what they say—'Well, we can't afford to spend anything on food'—and they will go and access food relief.

This is the current situation. We have skyrocketing rents. We have a massive shortage of housing. This has been totally self-inflicted by the neoliberal policies such as those that Senator Scarr has just been espousing—that everything is sweetness and light. The neoliberal policies of state and federal governments over decades are what have made this crisis. We've got 640,000 households in severe rental stress. Because of chronic underfunding of public and community housing, we have got a shortfall of 750,000 homes in the public and affordable housing sector.

So, while Senator Scarr might like to talk about queues in Scandinavia, I'll talk to him about the decades-long queues for people accessing public and community housing in every state and territory in Australia. There has been a massive failure of government policy. We need to have a huge increase in investment way beyond what the current government is investing through the housing affordability future fund—a massive increase in investment in public and affordable housing—and we need to have controls on rents.

I have had the privilege of chairing the Senate inquiry into the worsening rental crisis in recent months, and we have heard from so many renters who have been in so much stress. The evidence has been compelling and heartfelt, and it has really underlined the severity and the urgency of the housing crisis. The challenges that people face can be summed up as four things: the lack of genuinely affordable housing, including public, social and community housing; unregulated and skyrocketing rents; inadequate tenant protections; and systems that fundamentally favour landlords.

This bill, obviously, is addressing one of those—the need for rent freezes and then ongoing rents caps to address that issue of those skyrocketing rents—so that people aren't having to put up with and cope with those rents. I'll tell you the story of Jo, who shared that, since moving to Queensland, she has had to move seven times, costing her over $14,000. She told the committee:

In several of the properties I've rented, maintenance has been very poor.

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Getting air conditioning installed in a top-floor flat with no ceiling fans in Queensland was problematic, despite temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius. This same landlord increased the rent at every chance she could. When I finally called time and moved out, she did the same to the next tenant and the next tenant and the next tenant. In the year following my departure, she drove three tenants out with this aggressive approach. Her response? It's what the market demands.

We need to put a stop to this, and this is what the Greens' bill would do. I'll also tell you that rent controls and rent freezes are popular. People know that that is what is needed.

I was also at a briefing yesterday and was told about a recent poll by the Susan McKinnon Foundation. It revealed that Australians believe that capping rent increases is within their top five housing priorities for state governments. Renters want action, but the Labor government is refusing to listen here. Yes, it's a priority of the state governments, but we have got a federal government that has got Labor governments wall to wall across the mainland that could be taking action to be introducing rent controls and rent freezes as per this bill and could be funding a massive increase in the amount of affordable and community housing so that we would be taking the serious action that is needed to tackle the rental crisis.

The Greens are listening to the renters. The Greens are the party for renters. If people want to see action on rental prices, we believe that we have got the answers. We know that we need to have rent freezes and rent controls. We know that governments have to urgently invest in public, social, community and genuinely affordable housing. That's why we have acted. We got the government to commit an extra $3 billion as part of our negotiations on the Housing Australia future Fund legislation.

The third thing we need to do to make life bearable for people on low incomes who are struggling the most, who are the ones that cannot afford to pay these skyrocketing rents, is to increase income support.