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

We are in a rental crisis, with more and more people experiencing severe rental stress and unable to afford a roof over their heads. Wages are crawling while rents are soaring. The rental affordability index released yesterday by peak housing body National Shelter shows that people can no longer afford to rent homes within 15 kilometres of the CBD in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. My home city of Meanjin or Brisbane is now the third most unaffordable capital in Australia for renters. Affordability has dropped by nine per cent in just the last year. The rental crisis is particularly impacting those on low incomes, with a single pensioner now having to spend 64 per cent of their income just to rent a one-bedroom home—and that's if they can find one. A single person on JobSeeker is now completely priced out of many suburbs, with the average rent taking up 106 per cent of their income—raise the rate! But it's not only people living in capital cities that are experiencing rental stress. Things are even worse in regional Queensland, which is now the least-affordable place in Australia to rent. The least-affordable suburb in regional Queensland is Eumundi, on the Sunny Coast, where a median rental of $1,050 per week costs 58 per cent of the average regional householder's income, which is almost double the threshold for housing stress.

We know that older women and women escaping family and domestic violence are particularly vulnerable to rental stress and homelessness. For many women escaping violence, they're choosing between staying in violence and homelessness. Jenny is a 73-year-old woman who has lived in her car for nine months because she was not able to find housing when she escaped violence. Gold Coast pensioner Gayle Fuller was on the public housing waiting list for five years and would skip buying necessities to make ends meet while she was renting. There are currently more than 3,600 people over the age of 65 that are waiting for public housing because they've been priced out of the rental market. Younger renters are also experiencing record high rental stress, combined with the fact that they're now the most financially stressed generation in the country.

It doesn't have to be this way. Labor could immediately ease this rental crisis by stopping unlimited rent increases. Unlimited rent hikes should be illegal. Labor have every seat bar one at National Cabinet, and they could use the National Cabinet to coordinate a rent freeze. The Greens forced this issue onto the National Cabinet agenda before we agreed to pass the Housing Australia Future Fund, but there were only marginal changes by some states on rent, and the federal government still refuse to show any leadership on rent. We will continue to call on federal Labor to incentivise the states and territories to freeze rent increases for two years, with ongoing caps after that.

We know that rents are now one of the key drivers of inflation, so freezing rents for two years could have not only put close to $4,000 in the pockets of renters but helped control inflation at the same time. At a time when everyone is counting every single dollar, that would be a life-saving cost-of-living measure.

I want to compare that with the PBO costing of the subsidies that property developers get in negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. Property investors get $39 billion of public money in tax concessions this year alone, while renters are having to pay $4.9 billion extra in rent because Labor have decided that they're going to lock in unlimited yearly rent increases. Thirty-nine billion dollars to property developers and nothing for renters? We will keep fighting for a freeze and a cap on rent increases and for more billions of dollars for more public and affordable housing. Get it done. It is your responsibility.