We are in a housing crisis.
Here's how we fix it.
After months of enormous pressure from the Greens, Labor backflipped and agreed to $3 billion of direct and immediate funding for public and community housing.
This is the power of our movement. Without the Greens, Labor would have passed a plan that didn’t guarantee a cent in housing funding, but after months of pressure the Greens have forced Labor to guarantee $500 million a year from next year, and invest an extra $3 billion right now in public and community housing.
But Labor has continued to ignore renters, has refused to cap a freeze on soaring rents and refused to build enough public housing to end the housing crisis.
Labor had the chance to make unlimited rent increases illegal but they didn’t, this means every rent increase is Labor’s fault. Come the next election Labor should be prepared to hear from renters loud and clear that we are fed up with being treated as second class citizens.
The Greens are the only party fighting for renters and first home buyers.
We will continue to use our balance of power to get real solutions on the housing crisis, like a freeze and cap on rental increases, an end to the unfair tax handouts denying millions of renters the chance to buy a home, and massive investment in publicly owned homes.
There are a lot of renters, first home buyers, mortgage holders and their families who are angry at Labor and the Liberals for only offering more of the same.
@maxchandlermathermp For decades now Federal and State Government housing policy has been explicitly geared towards turbo charging house prices and driving up rents and putting billions of dollars in the pockets of property investors, property developers and the banks. Time after time they’ve chosen property investors over renters and those struggling to buy their first home. That’s why we’ll fight to scrap the tax handouts for property investors and invest billions in building hundreds of thousands of good quality homes to be sold and rented at prices people can actually afford. #auspol ♬ original sound - Max Chandler Mather
Labor is betraying renters
The housing and rental crisis is breaking people and Labor’s only solution this year will push up house prices even faster.
Renters and people waiting for social housing need action right now.
Rather than giving billions every year in unfair tax handouts like negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts to wealthy property investors, Labor should be offering incentives to the states to freeze rent increases and spending billions in funding for public and genuinely affordable housing.
At the same time, Labor is cutting funding for the NRAS program, which means 24,000 families will lose their affordable rental homes and face eviction into homelessness over the next 3 years.
There are wall-to-wall Labor governments across the mainland, so rent rises are their responsibility.
There are millions of renters staring down the barrel of eviction or financial stress if they cop one more massive rent increase, so just like Labor coordinated energy price caps they now must do the same and cap rents.
We can tackle the housing crisis
A safe and affordable home is an essential service and key to living a life with dignity. In a wealthy country like Australia everybody should have a secure home.
The Greens want everyone to have a safe and affordable home where they can put down roots, and build a strong community.
Here’s how we’ll do it:
- Immediately freeze and cap rent increases through National Cabinet.
- Renters across the country are being relentlessly slammed with unfair rental increases, and because of Australia’s weak rental laws, are routinely forced to accept increases of any amount, or risk homelessness.
- Over the past five years renters have paid on average $105,550 per household in rent. From June 2022-2023 renters were slogged with $3 billion dollars in increases.
- A freeze on rental increases is a temporary measure to give renters immediate relief while we make the other big changes we need.
- Phase out the unfair tax handouts like negative gearing and capital gains tax discount.
- This will save the budget billions of dollars that we could invest in public housing, while finally giving renters a chance to buy their first home.
- In 2023-24 tax handouts to property investors, including negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts will cost $38.9 billion dollars. Over the next decade these tax concessions will cost the Australian budget half a trillion dollars.
- These tax handouts are really unfair because the majority of the benefits are going to the top 10% of income earners, and they help investors outbid first home buyers at auctions
- Invest billions in building hundreds of thousands of good quality homes through a public property developer.
- The public developer would build 360,000 good quality homes over the next five years.
- Renters would save thousands every year because rent would be capped at 25% of household income.
- First homebuyers would save on average $260,000 on the price of a home.
- Homes would be available to anyone who wants to rent and anyone who doesn’t already own a home!
All of this is possible.
The Greens have made our priorities clear. We want to see a housing plan that actually starts to tackle the scale of the crisis.
Pressure works. Labor said there was no more money for housing last year and we pushed them to find $3b, and although Labor backs unlimited rent rises and unfair tax handouts for wealthy property investors we'll push them on those too.
Sounds good to you?
We need your help.
By scrapping tax handouts for wealthy property investors, we could fund building hundreds of thousands of good quality public homes over the next decade.
We could put an emergency freeze on rent increases in place right now to make sure that nobody has to fear eviction into homelessness because they can't afford to pay the rent.
There's absolutely no reason why we can't give everyone a home they can afford.
But it's going to take all of us.
Sign the petition calling on Labor to agree to our demands.
I'm looking forward to fighting together for a future where everyone has a good place to call home.
– Max Chandler Mather MP
Greens spokesperson for Housing