Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are in the midst of a housing crisis, one of the worst Australia has ever seen. Rental prices are at an all-time high and are only set to increase, leaving over 640,000 households needing social housing they just can't get. At the same time, we know that 122,000 people experience homelessness in Australia on any given night. Our housing system is broken. An urgent and transformative change is needed. Yet the only solution the Labor government is offering in response to this crisis is its Help to Buy scheme, a scheme that in its current form will screw over 99.8 per cent of renters and see the housing crisis get worse. This bill and Labor's so-called Help to Buy scheme offer up to 10,000 people the chance to have the government purchase 30 to 40 per cent of a private home. A person will only be eligible if they earn below $120,000 for a couple and $90,000 for an individual and if the house price is below a certain amount, depending on the city or region.

The intent of the policy is to reduce the amount of money a renter needs to purchase a home and the ongoing cost of a mortgage by allowing the government to own part of the home. However, in effect, all this scheme does is establish a terrible housing lottery where a maximum of 0.2 per cent of renters will get to access the scheme every year while the other 99.8 per cent of renters will find it even harder to buy a home. Throughout the Senate Economics Legislation Committee inquiry into this bill, expert witness after expert witness made clear that the Help to Buy scheme would only drive up housing prices. We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. To have hundreds of thousands of people without shelter or in severe rental stress is completely inexcusable. So why then is the only legislation Labor is putting forward this year in response to the crisis one where the majority of people lose? What is even more astonishing is that Labor seem to have no concrete understanding of their scheme's impact. Evidence provided to the Senate inquiry into this bill revealed that the Department of the Treasury had not undertaken any modelling on the effects that this scheme would likely have on housing prices. Whether small or large, any increase in house prices hurts renters who are trying to buy a home.

Failing to get proper modelling of the impact of the scheme is deeply irresponsible but perhaps not surprising for a government that blindly hands out massive tax breaks to property developers year after year. From the moment that this bill was introduced, the Greens have been willing to pass Labor's Help to Buy scheme if Labor negotiated with us on negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts. These handouts, as many witnesses to the Senate inquiry said, systematically disadvantage renters by collectively pushing up the price of houses. With the money saved from phasing out the big tax handouts for property investors, we could fully fund the Greens' plan to establish a public property developer to build 610,000 good-quality homes to be sold and rented at below-market prices. But Labor is refusing to listen to us or the experts about what is really needed to fix the housing crisis.

Labor, as you cozy up to property developers, banks and investors, that housing crisis is having real and painful consequences on everyday people. Each day, my team and I hear stories from people in Victoria who are having to make impossible decisions about whether to buy food and medicine or pay their rent. We are hearing from people who are living in properties not fit for winter or filled with mould because they are scared that they won't find a property if they leave, and from people having to move back in with their parents because they simply can't afford to pay rent.

I want to share a story I recently heard from Sonya Semmens, the Greens local candidate for the federal electorate of Macnamara, an electorate where 19 per cent of residents are experiencing rental stress. While Sonya was out doorknocking, she encountered a young woman carting all of her belongings onto the nature strip in front of a house. When she asked why they were doing this, the young woman told Sonya that they had to move out of their home because they had recently received a 64 per cent rental increase, one they simply couldn't afford. Let me repeat that: a 64 per cent rental increase. How is that even legal? While Sonya was helping these women move their belongings onto the nature strip, she asked them where they were going to move to. They told her that they had nowhere to go and their only option was to sleep on friends' couches. In a wealthy country such as Australia, this is absolutely devastating. Couch surfing is a form of homelessness, and it is because of the broken housing system, where a 64 per cent rent increase is legal, that they were forced into this situation.

I would also like to share some other stories from Victorians struggling to survive because of the housing crisis. These are stories from Everybody's home, the final report from the People's Commission into Australia's Housing Crisis. Christopher from Collingwood said:

The story of my last 18 years of survival is harrowing and heartbreaking. I'm broken. I'm burnt out. I'm furious that my chances at improving my life have been hampered at every turn by government inaction and cynical policies… I could have been something … Instead I've been unable to study or work or hold meaningful social connections because I've been struggling to keep a roof over my head.

Pauline from Frankston told the commission:

I spent last winter, one of the coldest on record, in a unit with a leaking roof, mould and fungi growing in my bedroom and without a working heater leading to me suffering a heart attack. I am trying to move but I cannot find another rental within my price range. I have been on [the] priority over 55 housing waiting list since 2016.

Amanda from Geelong shared:

I have been on a public housing waiting list for over 10 years in regional Victoria. I was told by a housing officer that by the time my name would be called off the list l would be dead as the wait list is so long … All l want is a safe affordable place to call home.

Petra from Bundoora told the commission:

Long waiting lists for public housing combined with limited supports able to help, my only option, which I'm very grateful for, is private rental however at great expense financially, emotionally, mentally and physically. [I] have no choice but to use buy now pay later for essentials. Accessing food relief which is soul destroying but still not able to have regular healthy meals which impacts overall wellbeing. [It is] impossible to have a haircut, see a dentist, replace old and worn clothes … [I] have had to ask [a] neighbour for toilet paper, it's absolutely devastating and no way to live. Actually it's not living, I wouldn't even call it surviving.

These stories, along with the stories from my home electorate of Macnamara, are harrowing, but they are all too common. Tell me, Labor, how is your Help to Buy scheme supposed to help these people and the hundreds of thousands of other people across the country in extreme rental pain?

For the last month, we have seen Labor grandstand about their decision to lift wages of early childhood educators an extra 15 per cent. While this decision was an important step and long overdue, the stark reality is that, even with this pay rise, it would take an educator 31 years to save the deposit for a mortgage. Early childhood educators are being priced out of local housing and rental markets and forced to find jobs elsewhere. This is having an enormous impact on regional and rural communities, where often there are more than three people per childcare place.

Recently, I visited Castlemaine and talked to some local families who told me they have been on waiting lists for years for early childhood education. One woman had been waiting for three years. She was on the waiting list when she was pregnant and her child had just turned three and she still hadn't been offered a place. She said she had $50,000 in her superannuation and couldn't go back to work. She was so anxious. She was pregnant and anxious about what future lay ahead for her. As a result, parents—mainly mothers—are unable to go back to work, because they can't get their kids into care.

When speaking to the local community, a key reason for the lack of child care was that educators couldn't find affordable housing. Unlike in metropolitan areas, essential workers in the regions can't be easily replaced from neighbouring suburbs. Early childhood education and care is a fundamental right. All kids should have access to high-quality, free, universal early years education. It's shameful that the lack of access to affordable housing is holding kids back from crucial early development and preventing parents from finding and maintaining work. While Labor is trying to say that their Help to Buy scheme will help early educators and other essential workers buy a house, the reality is that this bill in its current form will help only 0.2 per cent of renters. Without scrapping tax handouts and stopping unlimited rent increases, the Help to Buy scheme will do very little to help educators find housing and families living in childcare deserts to get the care that they need.

On public housing: this bill will also do nothing for the hundreds of thousands of people seeking help from homelessness services every year. They are in desperate need of public and genuinely affordable housing that simply isn't available. While the additional funding for the HAFF gained through the Greens negotiations last year was an important boost in funding for genuinely affordable housing, it still falls well below the funding needed to fill the massive shortfall of affordable housing in this country.

If Labor phased out tax handouts for property developers and investors, they could expend billions of dollars building public housing and build around half a million homes. That would come close to ending the shortfall of public housing in this country. Think about the millions of lives that we could change right now if the Labor government had the guts to stand up to the banks, property developers and massive property investors who benefit from our broken housing system. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese often speaks of growing up in public housing, yet it seems he is pulling up the ladder behind him as his government simply tinkers around the edges of this broken system.

Let's be very clear: this bill and Labor's Help to Buy scheme in its current form will see the housing crisis get worse. We cannot fix the housing crisis by pushing up housing prices and making it harder for 99.8 per cent of renters to buy a home. Labor, you will not fix the housing crisis by giving a lucky few more cash to bid up the price of housing at auctions. You will definitely not fix the housing crisis without touching negative gearing and the capital gains discount, the massive tax handouts for property investors that are denying millions of renters the chance to buy a home.

The Greens have a clear plan to make the transformative change needed to fix the housing crisis. We want to establish a federal housing trust to build a million public homes and social homes across cities, towns, regions and remote areas over the next 20 years. We want to slash the public housing wait list and end homelessness by building 875,000 good-quality public homes across Australia. The Greens also want to strengthen renters' rights by capping rent increases, ending no-grounds evictions once and for all, giving renters the right to longer leases and giving tenants the right to make minor changes. We also want to create a national renters protection authority to make it easier for renters across the country to advocate for their rights. Importantly, we want to ensure our tax system is no longer stacked in favour of wealthy investors. The Greens want to phase out negative gearing for people with two or more investment properties and wind back the capital gains tax discount. These changes are supported by many renters across the country, and we know that we can deliver the change necessary.

In 2022, before being elected, Anthony Albanese made a clear promise that his Labor government would leave no-one behind and hold no-one back. He touted an ambitious plan for a better future for all Australians, yet here we are, nearly three years later, when rents are increasing at nearly double the rate of wages, and the best that Prime Minister Albanese can do is the Help to Buy scheme, a scheme that will effectively screw over 99.8 per cent of renters and make housing less affordable.

Labor, no-one is buying your meaningless rhetoric anymore. People want real action, particularly the five million renters in this country who know the system is stacked against them. The Greens are offering real solutions, and come the next election I think Australia is going to vote based on who is actually representing their interests, not those of property developers, moguls and banks. Labor, if you aren't willing to come to the table and negotiate with us on real solutions that benefit most renters, not just 0.2 per cent, then be ready to face the consequences at the next election.

Jana Stewart (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Albanese Labor government wants more Australians to be able to get into the housing market sooner with smaller deposits and lower repayments. We want the dream of homeownership to be not just a dream but a reality, and that's exactly what this scheme will do. Help to Buy is a transformative proposal which will help tens of thousands of Australians reach that dream of owning their homes for the first time. How incredibly life changing. It will give a hand up to so many working families and take hundreds of dollars off their mortgage each month going forward. Under this scheme around 40,000 Australians—that is no small number—will be able to finally get ahead and buy their first home, with a supporting contribution from the government to make homeownership a reality.

Eligible Australians will be able to apply for the government to provide an equity contribution to their first home of up to 40 per cent of the cost of a new home or 30 per cent of an existing home. A lower deposit threshold will take pressure off their mortgages. They'll be able to secure themselves a home in which to raise their families and settle down. It's not just a quick leg-up for families purchasing their first home; it's a long-term solution, ensuring that Australians can have the security of a roof over their heads. Every Australian should have safe and secure housing, and we want to support them in buying their first home. This government wants to see more nurses, more teachers and more early childhood educators take that step and buy their first home.

Since coming to government two years ago, we've been hard at work building more houses for Australians. We have set an ambitious goal of building 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade and we intend to deliver. We have kickstarted the construction of new houses by freeing up more land for housing and cutting red tape to fast-track the construction of new homes. We can't build all these homes overnight, but we can take meaningful steps to make sure Australians can have roofs over their heads. That includes increasing rent assistance, which the Albanese Labor government has increased by 45 per cent since coming to office, along with the biggest investment in social and affordable housing in over a decade, financing the construction of 40,000 new social and affordable homes across Australia.

As someone who grew up in a housing commission house myself, I'm incredibly proud to be part of a government that is investing a record amount of money in this space. These are meaningful steps which have led to lasting impacts on Australians, and the Help to Buy scheme will only add to our record. As we build more and more homes, we want more working families to get a chance to own their own home. But time and time again the Greens and the coalition have come together to block meaningful action in this place, whether it's the Australia Future Fund or the Help to Buy scheme. They take every opportunity to turn their backs on aspiring Australians to peddle their nonsense.

When push comes to shove, the Greens and the Liberals do not have your back. They'd rather have a cheap stunt and parade around to their supporters than actually get anything done. The coalition does not have a plan, and the Greens are willingly following them into their 'no-alition' mind state. When the coalition were in power, they were a complacent bunch who rung their hands and sat idly by as housing got more and more expensive and wages stayed stagnant—by design, no less. Instead of offering first home buyers a hand up, they turned a pointed the finger at migrants while ordinary Australians struggled to pull together enough for a deposit. This is who the Greens are teaming up with to block our housing plan.

Now look at the opposition. Instead of helping us build more homes, instead of offering Australians a helping hand, their solution is to raid your super. They want to tank your children's future in retirement with what experts have rightly trashed as one of the worst policy proposals in the 21st century. They cannot pull themselves together to support anything this Labor government has put forward, because the details don't matter to them. Before they've even heard the details, they're happy to say no. They've run out of ideas and they've reverted to their basic programming of wanting to rip money out of your super and blame immigrants, when the truth is that they were asleep at the wheel for a decade. They let housing get away from Australians. The coalition has no plan and no future plan for Australians. We have a scheme which can lower the deposit rate to two per cent for eligible Australians and take hundreds off their monthly payments, but that's too much for the coalition's taste. That's too accessible for them. The dream should only be available to the lucky few, according to those opposite, and the Greens are backing them in that ambition. They have taken every opportunity to stand in the way of building more homes or giving Australians a fair go at buying a house.

Then there's the Greens, who care more about building their social media followers than they do about building homes. They spend more time making TikToks about housing than they do actually voting for it—but, tick-tock, the clock is ticking. Every time this Labor government tries to make a positive difference in people's lives, whether it be through building more homes under the Housing Australia Future Fund or now with the Help to Buy scheme, the Greens take the opportunity to grandstand and block action. Housing affordability is a serious problem which requires grown-up solutions. Clearly there are some people in this place who aren't up to the task. What we do not need in this country is more opportunistic Greens who see people suffering as nothing less than an opportunity to take cheap shots at the government rather than sit down and help us pass legislation that will make a real difference to Australians today.

We all want what is best for Australians. It is a fact that a shared equity scheme is not a brand-new idea, but it is certainly a popular one. Former Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison himself suggested years ago that a shared equity scheme would help with mortgage stress for first home buyers, before ultimately sticking it to ordinary Australians to get a leg up against Labor. Shared equity is even in the Greens' platform, for all the commentary over here, but they're still going to stand there and vote against it. It's an idea that they had, but they're going to stand here and vote against it, because that's what they do. They're happy to grandstand with the opposition and block meaningful action, because that's what they do. The Greens political party are holding legislation up even if they agree with it. For them, it's not about the outcome; it's about the campaign. Thousands and thousands of Australians will continue to face pressure on their mortgages, unable to access this transformative Help to Buy scheme, all because the Greens political party want to make a political statement. They are literally playing with people's lives.

To the Greens I say that blocking this scheme to help more Australians own a home is certainly a statement, and it's a statement that I'm sure Australians will remember when they go to the polls next year. They'll remember that the Greens political party are not serious about housing. They know that you're a party of protest, not a party of action. Why else would they side with Peter Dutton to block young people from getting into housing if it isn't just about them being a party of protest? Because they are full of it.

As thousands of Australians call out asking for action on housing, the Greens will say one thing on social media and then vote another way in this Senate. They will turn around and vote down action with the Liberals. That is exactly what they are doing with your future, young people of this country. If the Greens or the Liberal Party were serious about getting housing affordability under control, there is one very practical and pragmatic thing they could do: vote for this bill. Instead of grandstanding or being complacent, they should pull themselves together and vote for something that we can all agree on.

The Help to Buy scheme is an opportunity for Australians to get ahead and reach that dream. We want more hardworking Australians to have secure roofs over their heads. We want them to settle down and be supported as they raise families, just as lots of people in this place have had the privilege to do. But they don't want that for other people because they are the type of people that, once they climb the ladder, pull the ladder up after them. What a shame. That is exactly what's on display in this place.

With lower deposit rates and even lower repayments on their mortgage, these families have a chance to own a home for the first time in their lives. Yet here we are today, with the Greens political party teaming up with the Liberals to stop tens of thousands of hardworking Australians from getting into the market with this shared-equity scheme. These Australians have worked hard and deserve to own their own home. Help to Buy would go a long way to helping Australians with the cost of living. We know mortgages and rents are the largest costs hitting working families in Australia, so it's a shame the Liberals and the Greens team up time and time again and choose to prioritise political pointscoring over real-world action. Financial security and putting a roof over the head of every Australian is no laughing matter. Political games should not be played. And that is exactly what's on display in this Senate.

With whatever time I have left, I want to leave the coalition and the Greens with this one simple message: pull yourselves together. Get behind this scheme or get out of the way, and let us deliver meaningful action on housing for Australians, as the country expects us to. They want more affordable homes, they want to buy their first home, and they want lower mortgage rates. Stop standing in the way of Australians' aspirations and get behind what could be the difference between tens of thousands of families getting a home and those families missing out again and again thanks to the Greens and the Liberals teaming up in this place. Shame on you!

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sometimes it's useful or instructive to look at a piece of legislation when it comes to this chamber and break it down into two simple parts: a policy part and a politics part. I've seen some amazing legislation in this place that's truly driven reform, that's been built on years of evidence and testimony from multiple stakeholders and multiple Senate inquiries, with a lot of hard work by a lot of senators in this place and across political divides, like the original NDIS legislation and the Gonski reforms, which the Labor Party should be very proud they brought in. I've seen the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry deliver significant reform that we've all supported. When you get good policy like that, it kind of drives the politics. Everybody gets behind it. But then you get pieces of legislation, like the ones we're dealing with tonight—the Help to Buy Bill 2023 and the Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023—where a government tries to drag the Senate by the nose, using politics to get everybody to support legislation when it's not based on good evidence. In fact, the evidence suggests it's actually not good policy. But they try and beat the drum, get up in here and make big statements—very short on any policy detail, I may say, from what I've heard in here tonight.

It's worth having a good look at why the policy is so inadequate, and I would like to start by saying, firstly, that it's not enough. If you want to do something about the rental crisis then you need to do something about the rental crisis. If you want to do something about housing affordability in this country then you need to actually act on housing affordability in this country.

This is my 13th year in this place. My colleagues and I, since I arrived here, have repeatedly debated, brought in legislation and initiated Senate inquiries into multiple aspects of tackling inequality in this country, especially around housing. We've continually tried to remove the distortions in our tax system, like negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, that not only remove billions of dollars of taxpayer funds that should be paying for schools and hospitals but also distort the housing market, make it so unfair for many Australians who are forced to rent and can't afford to buy their own homes, and give a leg-up to wealthy property investors and retirees in this country.

I know Mr Shorten announced his retirement last week. Kudos to him. He not only tackled the banks and did his best as opposition leader at the time to get that debate through this place but also tried within the Labor Party to take on these big reforms, which are absolutely crucial if we're going to fix this problem. But no. It's too politically difficult for the Albanese government: 'Small target—don't want to go anywhere near it.'

What about other reforms that are necessary, like cracking down on money laundering in this country, something that, once again, my Greens colleagues and I have spent many years working on? I'm pleased to say that at least the Attorney-General is doing some submissions and consulting on the tranche 2 laws, which leave a massive loophole in Australia for accountants, real estate agents and other entities to advise their clients on how to hide behind shell companies and avoid transparency for money laundering. Money laundering is a massive issue in Australia, particularly the dark money that goes into our real estate market, where foreign investors pump billions into Australia, buying properties at auctions and competing against everyday Australians who want to buy their own homes. Why is it that respective governments haven't cracked down on these loopholes in our money-laundering laws when other countries have? I certainly hope Mr Dreyfus finally brings in those tranche 2 laws, because every attorney-general prior to him said they would and then never did.

There is so much more that we should be doing on building public housing, but where are the big plans to build public, social and affordable housing in Australia? Across this country, millions of renters are struggling to keep their heads above water. With house prices and mortgages soaring, this scheme that we're debating here tonight just isn't good enough.

That's where it comes to the politics. This is the kind of thing on which the government will go to the next election and say, 'We've acted for Australians to help them get in to buy their own homes and get then out of rental stress, and here's what we've done.' I'm not sure whether the LNP have talked about this, but, as the Senate has heard from my colleagues tonight, this will potentially—I say 'potentially', but in fact it is very unlikely—give a leg-up to just 0.2 per cent of renters in this country. What about the other 99.8 per cent of renters in this country? What are they going to do? Why won't they get access to this scheme? How stingy! Then we're going to see it used as a slick promo going into the next election, saying that the Albanese government has somehow acted on one of the great crises of our time.

I need to say that from the moment this bill was introduced the Greens have been willing to work with Labor to pass this scheme if they negotiate with us on the policy that actually matters, like removing negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts and a whole bunch of other really important policies. We've asked, in our negotiations, for them to take action on freezing and capping rents, to end tax handouts for property investors that stop renters buying their first home and to establish a government owned property developer which would build 610,000 houses to be sold at just above the cost of construction and with rents capped at 25 per cent of income.

I've heard Labor senators talk about the fact that the Greens had a shared-equity scheme at the last election. Yes, we did. You can go online and see it. But it was a shared-equity scheme that bought government-built houses under this scheme from new supply, not gave people money to go out and buy existing dwellings, which is only going to serve to push up the price of existing housing and make the crisis worse. Our scheme was specifically targeted at giving people the chance, like we see in Singapore and other countries, to buy a house off the government that they are renting from the government from new supply.

Labor has not made a single counteroffer or engaged in good-faith negotiations in any meaningful way. Why not? The last election result was a clear message from Australians that didn't give them the balance of power in the Senate. It meant they had to negotiate with other political parties to get better representation and outcomes for Australians. Why refuse to negotiate with us to get this bill through?

The Greens believe housing is essential and a basic human need. In a country as wealthy as Australia, the government has a responsibility to ensure everyone has an affordable, quality home. In my home state of Tassie, according to the 2021 census data, Tasmania experienced the largest increase in homelessness in Australia in the five years to 2021, jumping by 45 per cent. Also in my home state, the average renter pays $6,240 more to keep a roof over their head than they did in the five years prior to that, according to the Tenants Union of Tasmania's submission to the inquiry on Homes Tasmania in July 2024. According to ABC reports published in March this year, the waiting list for social housing in Tasmania has essentially doubled, and the average time people wait on the list has gone up by a factor of four, from 16 weeks to 80 weeks. That's more than a factor of four.

This housing crisis, fuelled by the tens of billions of dollars handed out to wealthy property investors every year by the Albanese Labor government, is hurting women and children the most. The Somewhere to go housing report, led by Impact Economics and Policy, published in November 2023, estimates approximately 604 Tasmanian women are becoming homeless each year after leaving a violent partner, while 330 are returning to one. These are the exact kinds of statistics that the Greens plan to deal with. Our massive public housing build would help alleviate that by providing safe and affordable housing at the scale we actually need, not the fraction and crumbs that the Labor Party is offering with this pathetic bill.

It's as plain as day that renters and first home buyers are doing it so tough in my home state and in other parts of the country, but the Albanese Labor government refuses to protect the tens of thousands of people who rent in Tasmania, by implementing a rent freeze and a cap on unreasonable rent increases. The proposed Help to Buy scheme would only help, as I mentioned earlier, 10,000 of Australia's 5.5 million adult renters per year—0.2 per cent. And that's something to crow about? As a result, overall homeownership rates are lowered as more people are priced out of housing.

We have seen these shared-equity schemes before. Other examples are the First Home Owner Grant scheme and the coalition's HomeBuilder program. And let's not forget the scheme we got during COVID, giving everybody a bunch of money to go out and do a house renovation. How did that work out? It massively inflated building costs. Actually, I know people who got on that scheme. By the time they had actually got the quote and got around to building or doing renovation in their house, they lost more than 50 per cent of what they would have had had they not taken up the scheme. That's how out of pocket they were, because prices were that inflated.

The Tenants' Union of Tasmania's submission to the Tasmanian inquiry into Homes Tasmania said that the waiting list for social housing in Tasmania has essentially doubled and the average time people spend waiting on the list has gone up by a factor of more than four. What are we doing about that? We're not building any new homes in Tasmania with any federal money at the moment. The proposed Help to Buy scheme is not going to fix this crisis, as we see homeownership rates fall and as more people are priced out of housing.

I would like to see, and my colleagues would like to see, the government come to the table to negotiate. We would like to see them reform and bring in legislation that all Australians, except perhaps wealthy property investors, would like to see. Now is the time to be courageous. We know costs of living right around this country are a major election issue, if not the major election issue. You only need to go and knock on doors to see how tough people are doing it out there and see how many people are so grateful if their landlord renews their lease. Recently I doorknocked someone, a single mum, who sends a lot of the income she earns—her disposable income, if there's any left at all—to support her mother, who's on a disability pension. She actually cried and got emotional with me when she told me that she was so relieved that, just the week before I knocked on her door, her landlord had renewed her lease for another 12 months—she was that frightened about being put out on the streets. And I know those stories are everywhere.

Why is it that this is the best we can do when there are so many Australians on waiting lists for public housing, when there are so many women who have been forced back into violent relationships because there are no shelters and long-term housing available for them? Surely we can do better than this? The amount of money that has been appropriated for this is a drop in the ocean. This is about getting our priorities right, not just as the government but as a parliament working together on some significant reform. This is not significant reform. The government can go out and do press conferences every day. They can also put up their social media videos. They can ask themselves questions during question time. But Australians outside this political bubble get it. They want to know why they're not being represented and why these issues aren't being taken seriously, why addressing their hurt and pain is not being prioritised by this government. Well, the Greens will prioritise that, and people will vote for us at the next election if you don't stand up for them.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The housing crisis that our community is struggling through right now is causing so much pain to so many people. In every part of our country, people are having to choose between putting food on their table and paying their rent; being able to support their kids to go to school with something in their belly and the books they need and being able to make their mortgage payment for that month. That's not okay. That's not right. That's not acceptable. In a wealthy country like Australia, that families would have to do this, that grandparents would have to do this and that single parents would have to do this is abominable. It's a national disgrace. Housing is a human right for all people, and this government has a responsibility to ensure that everybody has an affordable, safe and accessible home.

The proposed legislation that the government brings to the parliament simply does not, simply will not, address the scale of the crisis that is being experienced by households across this country. When this law was first introduced, so many in the community read its title and felt hope. After all, it was called the Help to Buy Bill. And yet how many people would be helped to buy by this bill? Eighty per cent of renters? No. Sixty per cent of renters? No. Forty per cent? No. Thirty? Not even close. Not 10, not five, but 0.2 per cent of Australia's renters would be eligible to be 'helped to buy' by this bill—0.2 per cent of all of the renters struggling right now.

What's worse—and it is in fact adding insult to injury—is that this program, as minuscule and inadequate as it is, actually risks making other parts of the housing system more inaccessible, more expensive, for the rest of the community. This was given as evidence to us, clearly, in the inquiry. We had some of the best experts in the country—housing policy experts and financial experts—come to the inquiry and give their view. For example, Professor John Quiggin, professor of economics at the University of Queensland, said:

These schemes have been around forever, but the money is eventually capitalised into house prices, so the beneficiaries gain at the expense of everyone else.

The Productivity Commission has said:

There is also a risk that, over time, governments may fuel an 'assistance spiral', where the assistance makes house prices more expensive by increasing demand, prompting governments to increase assistance, pushing up prices further, and on it goes.

At the committee hearing, the government's own Department of the Treasury acknowledged that demand-side interventions do push up house prices, but the government is still ploughing forward with this scheme. The Senate inquiry was clear: this scheme would benefit only a tiny fraction of potential first home owners, while increasing prices for everyone not lucky enough to win Labor's housing lottery. We can't allow renters to be further locked out of buying a home.

Now let's talk about what this crisis actually looks like in this country. Rents have increased by 53 per cent since 2020. Renters are expected to cop an additional $5 billion in rent increases this year. Around Australia, only 0.6 per cent of rentals are affordable for someone working full-time earning the minimum wage, and close to zero—yes, that's right; I didn't misspeak; you didn't hear wrong: 'close to zero'—are affordable for people on the age pension, the DSP, JobSeeker or youth allowance.

Housing prices have increased by 46 per cent since 2020. None of the most common professions in Australia can afford to buy a home right now. It would take a full-time childcare educator until 2055 to save a deposit. A full-time childcare worker would have to save from now until 2055 to be able to have in their possession a deposit, and then they'd have to spend 92 per cent of their earnings on mortgage repayments. For a primary-school teacher, it would take until 2036 to save for a home deposit. If a primary-school teacher were then to take out a home loan, they would have to pay 53 per cent of their income on home loan repayments, forcing them into severe financial stress. The real kicker is this: for a sales assistant, the most common profession in Australia, data shows that they may never be able to save for a home deposit, due to the growth of house prices at a rate faster than wages. If you are a sales assistant, the system created by the Liberal and Labor parties has effectively forever locked you out of owning your own home.

The shortage of public and social housing is projected to increase under this government from an already unacceptable high of 750,000 homes. Over the next 10 years, the federal government will give over $176 billion in tax handouts to property investors through negative gearing and through the capital gains discount. These are policies which overwhelmingly benefit the rich and the influential. Overwhelmingly, in fact, they benefit members of parliament—who would have thunk it!—who, on average, own 2.5 properties each. I wonder why this parliament has never really been able to deal with the tax breaks and the golden parachutes that exist in this system for those who own more than one property. It's almost like it's because this place is full of them!

Now, specifically in my home town of Perth in Western Australia, the prospect of homeownership, especially for young people, is being pushed further and further out of reach by a rental crisis that this Labor government is refusing to act on. In Perth's inner suburbs, the median weekly rent is nearly $800, and it's rising, meaning that places that young families called home are now completely unaffordable. Bayswater has seen a 15 per cent increase in the median weekly rent in the last 12 months alone. Landlords have used, during this crisis, new state rental laws to punish tenants, with constituents in places like North Perth seeing a 25 to 40 per cent rise in their rents from lease to lease.

Now, the Greens have outlined our key asks in return for supporting passage of the legislation. These include action on freezing and capping rents, ending the tax handouts for property investors that stop renters buying their first home, and establishing a government owned property developer that would build 610,000 homes, to be sold off at just above the cost of construction, with rents capped at 25 per cent of income. Labor has not offered a single good-faith response to these proposals. The Greens are fighting for a two-year freeze on rent increases; a phase-out of unfair tax concessions, like negative gearing; and the reinvestment of this money into building beautiful, government built, sold and rented homes that people can actually afford. We need to take the real steps necessary to address the rental crisis. Australians deserve more than a housing lottery bill where 98 per cent of renters lose. This action must be taken.

The people of my home town, the people of Perth, particularly the young people of Perth, deserve a government made up of members of parliament that are willing to engage with the reality that the opportunity to own your own home is being pushed further and further away, that this is a crisis and that the situation, the struggle and the pain being experienced by renters right now is not okay. The increases in the inner west in the inner suburbs of our city that have seen a weekly rent rise to $800 is not okay. That is not okay. If you are a community member in the inner suburbs, you should not have to be paying that much money to have a home. You should not have to be enduring that. If you are a member of the community of Bayswater, you should not have to be in a situation where you have to try to plan for a 15 per cent increase in the median weekly rent over the course of a year. Nobody in this place could do that. Nobody in this place could make that work. Let me tell you right now that there is no budgeting tool, no session of financial counselling and no 'Oh, let's download the app' that lets you, as a single parent, find the money to make the difference when your rent rises 25 to 40 per cent between each lease. It's not possible.

The failure of places like this, the failure of this government, to tackle this crisis shows just how deeply disconnected both major parties have become from the needs of the community. When you hear—and I know you hear it—the rising sentiment that nothing changes if nothing changes, when you hear that so many no longer wish to vote for the major parties because they know that you can't keep voting for the same two parties and expect to get a different result, this is why. The people of Perth and the people of WA deserve better.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to comment on the Help to Buy Bill 2023. I want to associate myself with the comments of my Greens colleagues that you've heard in this debate over the course of the day and also some of the outstanding comments—and I will give gratitude where it's due—of some of the opposition members that I have heard speak today in their contributions, particularly Senator Ruston and Senator Bragg. Help to Buy as it stands doesn't deal adequately with the underlying causes of the housing affordability crisis in this country. It is set to only look at a small fraction of the community at a time when we are facing one of the biggest, most widespread and entrenched problems of this generation. It has been referred to as 'the great divide'. It is the great divide between millennials and gen Zs and gen alphas—my children of the next generations, who may never be able to afford a home. The legislation is limited in scope, and it shows that it's a policy designed to make it seem like this government is actually doing something when it's really not. It's window-dressing.

Aside from the scale of this problem, taking a demand-side approach through a shared-equity scheme is the wrong policy for its time. As everyone keeps pointing out, we have a crisis of supply; in fact, we have an acute shortage of supply. The difference between the major parties and the Greens is that the Labor and Liberal parties want to wait for the market to magically correct itself, while the Greens are arguing for state and federal governments to step in and actually build some houses and get back to what it was originally set out to do.

I want to echo in particular the comments of my colleagues, particularly Mr Chandler-Mather in the other place, who is our housing spokesperson, that since this bill was introduced we have been very clear with the Albanese Labor government that our negotiating asks include capping rent increases, a mass build of public housing and scrapping the tax handouts for property investors, who are denying millions of renters the chance to buy a home. But Labor has offered nothing in return. We have a mixed economy, so we need to make the market do its job. It won't while it's being distorted beyond all recognition by negative gearing. These solutions are right in front of us. Negative gearing must be phased out by both state and federal governments in order to get back to the business of building homes. It has worked in the past, and it can and will work again.

In the contributions my Greens colleagues have made here today, they have all outlined the details of our housing program, which has been costed, along with our other policies, by the PBO, so in this speech I'll concentrate specifically on the question of access. Access to government help can involve lots of paperwork, lots of documentation and proof of ID. The First Peoples of this country, with the history that is attached to that, have plenty of horrific experiences with bureaucracy in this country, so we don't always have access to the kinds of documentation that non-Indigenous people do. We don't always have access to the economic opportunities and jobs that other Australians can easily access. So, at the end of the day, these sorts of schemes—schemes based on shared equity—tend to help the people that are already a little ahead of the game, rather than First Nations people or Indigenous people and others who face barriers of one kind or another. This is not an equitable approach. The people who are the most in need will need something more straightforward—a place they can rent at an affordable rate.

Australia is facing shortages of tradespeople and materials at this point. We need governments to step in and make sure that some of the capacity we do have is directed towards building affordable rental properties. That has to be our absolute priority so that the people who are struggling can have an opportunity to get onto the bottom rung of that ladder. We have so many people that that bottom rung is crucial for the whole of our country to ensure that we at least be ambitious enough to get there. It matters for everyone, because people don't just jump from school into homeownership. They don't have the bank of mum and dad, as somebody over that side mentioned this morning. Many people need to rent for a while, particularly while they are younger, before moving on to homeownership. That's even if it's financially possible for them to do that. And, if there's no way into the rental system, how are people supposed to complete that stage of the process before moving on to the point where they might actually even be considering something like the Help to Buy scheme?

As my colleague from Western Australia Senator Steele-John just mentioned, $800 is the average rent for families. This average is out of reach for most people. All over this country we see people who are in overcrowded share houses or staying with their parents well into their adulthood or just flat out becoming homeless because governments just don't get it.

When we consider the state of housing, particularly in remote communities, we are left with a feeling that governments have absolutely lost the plot altogether. They are completely out of touch. I will give you an example of that. In Martu country, in Newman, Western Australia, there hasn't been a house built since 1986—1986! Don't point the finger to that side of the chamber and say they did this in opposition. Don't point the other way and say, 'It was that side.' It was in 1986 that the last house was built, in Punmu.

The state and territory governments are not doing their jobs when it comes to building social housing, particularly in remote Australia. Even when projects are instigated, they are often poorly planned and with no community consultation. As to the housing type, the locations that would best serve those communities, the energy that is required, climate change—they're the critical questions we should now be asking in some of those remote areas as we go into a housing build.

In Western Australia in particular people are being asked to leave country so as to access housing in large towns hundreds of kilometres from their traditional lands, from their homelands. The federal government must take charge of the current housing situation and work with their state and territory partners to create a national set of standards. What we know in Western Australia is that the repairs, the maintenance and the works that operate in housing, in particular public and social community housing, are below standard.

I want to address the comments made in the other place by the member for Perth, Mr Gorman. He stated that this Help to Buy scheme is based on Western Australia's Keystart shared-equity scheme. If that's the case, then it shows us that the Help to Buy Bill is in fact inadequate for the task at hand. The housing crisis in Western Australia is rampant, as it is in many other parts of this country. Keystart does nothing to the scale of what Mr Gorman is claiming. In fact, Keystart home loans are generally more expensive than conventional lending institutions, so we're stitching people up to pay more to a shared-equity scheme.

Presently, you can expect to pay in the vicinity of one per cent more for a Keystart loan than you do for a regular bank loan. For a loan of $300,000, that equates to an extra $200 per month in interest. If you can show me a person in Australia who's a low- or mid-range income earner who has an extra $200 a month to throw around, I will sit down right now. That is ridiculous!

In addition to that, Keystart loans don't have features like offset accounts and the ability to package your banking products to save money. Therefore, you're likely to save money by refinancing with a more cost-effective product, as well as making your banking life much easier and much more efficient, which, as Senator McKim will tell you, is not our favourite subject to even talk about. People in this place, and across the way in the House, need to understand the scale of what we're looking at instead of comparing schemes that are not doing the action that we actually require.

This bill represents a deeply unambitious policy, introduced at a time when homelessness is becoming such an entrenched problem. As I said, the cracks were starting to show with the millennials, and now we're asking whether our gen Zs and even our gen alphas will ever be able to afford their own homes. Once homelessness becomes so entrenched in our community, it doesn't just go away.

Homelessness breeds all kinds of embedded poverty, because a lack of a home base affects all aspects of a person's life. If you don't have an address, the problem I mentioned earlier—with the lack of documentation—only gets worse. You find yourself unable to make appointments with government agencies and prospective employers because you're permanently looking for shelters and basic supplies. If we think things are bad now, they're going to get 10 times worse if governments do not act in a coordinated way and do not address the deep, core issues across Australia.

The government faces a massive problem, but it also has an opportunity. If they start working with the Greens and the crossbench right now to address these systemic issues, they could actually make a massive difference. There's also the opportunity to work with our communities to solve the problems for all Australians. Some politicians in this place have ideological problems with things like public housing, so they might rule themselves out of even having that conversation. The vast majority of sensible people agree that something must be done, and the goodwill is definitely there, but tinkering around the edges will not help the vast majority of people.

The Help to Buy scheme's impacts on house prices will be minimal, but it will increase them, not reduce them. And we need to bring prices down to affordable levels. Public housing brings prices down to the lower end of the market, providing shelter and reducing prices in the private market while, at the same time, leaving the middle and upper markets to operate as normal. The Help to Buy scheme will use resources that could otherwise be directed to more effective solutions to this crisis. Having said that, this scheme could potentially help a small number of buyers, so, as I've already flagged, there is an opportunity. If the government wanted support from the Greens, it could absolutely listen to our solutions to this issue: phasing out negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount for property investors.

As we've said before, this is an opportunity to coordinate a national rent freeze and a cap on increases, and the whole country must increase investment in public housing. The Greens' suggestion of a public developer to direct the building of 610,000 homes over the next decade is a good way to get things done. That's the sort of thing that is needed. That is the scale of what is required. We are in an age where governments have become too scared to do anything meaningful, which is one of the reasons why we have this housing crisis in the first place. We need to take real steps to address the housing and rental crisis. Australians deserve better and need more than the housing lottery bill, where 98.8 per cent of renters lose. We simply cannot afford for this current situation to continue.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since Labor came to power about two years ago, rents in Australia have increased by 30 per cent on average. Since Labor came to power about two years ago, mortgages have increased by an average of over $1,600 a month. More and more people are experiencing housing stress, and yet, instead of the big, bold, reformist approach proposed by the Australian Greens to respond to this massive social crisis, we're getting tinkering at the margins. What we are getting from Labor is, frankly, a pathetic response given the scale of the crisis. A centrepiece of that response is the Help to Buy scheme, which is basically a lottery that would help 0.2 per cent of renters and put house prices up for the other 99.8 per cent.

Debate interrupted.