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

The Greens are moving for the Senate to call on the government to end the handouts for wealthy property investors, which are denying renters the chance to buy their first home. House prices have gone up stratospherically everywhere. In my home town of Brisbane, or Meanjin as it's also known, they've gone up 16 per cent in the last year. In regional Queensland, it's over 11 per cent. It is getting harder and harder for people to buy their first home, because our tax settings make it cheaper for someone to buy their fifth home. It's like a dragon hoarding gold, and taxpayer dollars are being allocated to it.

This is on top of the fact that it's getting harder to save to buy a home, because rents are going up. Rents have gone up in Brisbane by 8½ per cent in the last year, and nationally they're forecast to go up by another 10 per cent in the coming year. For renters, one more rent rise could mean eviction into homelessness, but for property investors, who have already got $39 billion in tax handouts from the government, that $5 billion—that 10 per cent increase in rent—is just a drop in the ocean. They might not even notice it. We had that figure costed. If Labor were to implement a freeze on rent, Australia's seven million renters would save about $2,500 per household in the next year or $5.3 billion in total. Labor needs to find the guts to stand up to the wealthy property investors.

Labor's Help to Buy legislation is before the parliament, and a budget analysis that we asked the Parliamentary Budget Office to do found that negative gearing and capital gains tax for residential property investors will cost $165 billion from the public purse over the next 10 years. Two-thirds of that goes to the top 20 per cent of income earners—no surprises there—and the capital gains discount alone would see 83 per cent of the benefit go to the top 20 per cent of income earners. These people don't need the help. We are in a housing crisis, and housing is, was and should always be considered a human right.

We have said that we will help pass your Help to Buy legislation if you agree to move to phase out those negative gearing and capital gains discounts that are making homes further and further out of reach for first home owners. But we've got a property investor Prime Minister, who's trying to ram through a bill that will actually drive up house prices while refusing to scrap the massive tax handouts for investors that are denying millions of renters the chance to buy a home. Every day that your government refuses to find the courage to phase out these unfair tax handouts is another day that a potential first home buyer gets screwed over at an auction by a property investor.

Pouring fuel on the fire of an already raging housing crisis is $165 billion worth of public tax handouts. Until we scrap those deeply inequitable tax perks that have seen house prices skyrocket, we're never going to get the housing crisis under control. I know you guys love the polls, but published polling now says that a majority of Australians actually want to phase out negative gearing and capital gains tax. What is stopping you? Why are you choosing wealthy property investors over millions of renters? We stand ready to work with this government to phase out those unfair tax handouts and to finally give an entire generation some hope that they might one day be able to own a home.

The Labor government rails against us trying to improve their housing legislation, but they need to start bowling up legislation that will actually help fix the housing crisis. We were criticised for holding out on passing the HAFF, the Housing Australia Future Fund, but we held out and got $3 billion for social housing, so we're holding out on your other two bills so you can fix them as well, and so we can actually work together to address the housing crisis.

In brief, the build-to-rent plan is another really weird piece of legislation that will actually funnel yet more dollars into the pockets of wealthy property investors. Private developers are going to get subsidies to build apartments and homes, only 10 per cent of which have to be considered affordable. I'm sorry, you're just pouring money down the drain at this point. It's about time that people actually have a government that delivers on measures to address the housing crisis. Stop tinkering around the edges. We need a rent freeze and a cap. We need to scrap the handouts for property investors, and we need a public developer to actually build homes that people can afford to rent and buy.