2024-10-04
By Max Chandler-Mather
Member for Griffith
The last 12 months have been very busy for my team and I. From our work on housing, renters and homelessness, to ramping up our mutual aid programs, supporting residents of Griffith, and a range of local issue campaigns, every component of our work has increased in the last 12 months as we have truly found our feet and rhythms.
The horrific genocide and brutal colonial violence that is unfolding in Gaza, and other parts of the world has of course loomed in the background, and brought a sense of urgency and clarity to the kind of global, mass change we need, and the long road ahead for our movement to build the kind of power necessary to see an end to Australia’s support of this kind of horrific genocidal violence and subservience to United States foreign policy.
My team and I have used every opportunity at our disposal to highlight the Greens’ calls for an end to two way arms trade with Israel and sanctions on the Israeli government, from speaking at dozens of rallies and community events, to speaking out in Parliament.
Mutual aid programs
From its early days, my office has had a focus on using the resources provided to me as a Federal MP and our incredible movement of volunteers, to deliver tangible mutual aid to our local community. While our programs aren’t just centred around food, with the cost of living crisis escalating and grocery prices soaring, we’ve really focused on delivering free meals.
In the last 12 months I’m very proud to say that we’ve been able to serve approximately:
- 24,000 free school breakfasts (approximately 600 per week across three local state schools, @ 40 weeks of the year)
- 6750 free dinners (150 per week across 2x dinner programs @ 45 weeks of the year, with the help of our local Greens State MP and Councillor who run and co-fund these ones)
- 16,000 free sausage sizzles (approx 30 small/medium BBQs @ average of 200 meals per bbq = 6000 + 4-5 major events including Invasion Day, and several local festivals = 10,000)
= 46,750 total free meals
Alongside that our community pantry is emptied 2-3 times per day, and we’re very grateful for our partnerships with the legends at Foodbank who enable some of the most food insecure members of our community to access this resource.
This year we also ran our first ‘Back to School’ event, where we provided around 300 local families with free school equipment, and ran our first (hopefully of many!) school holidays football tournament. Around 120 local kids participated in the day and it was truly such a special occasion!
We’ve also run a number of other community events that we consider broadly under the banner of ‘mutual aid’ including helping out at existing community events such as fundraisers, school fetes, working bees etc. Over the last 12 months we have contributed to around 15 of these types of events working with local schools, kindergartens and organisations.
This work has strengthened our connection to the community in Griffith immeasurably, and has built a great deal of trust and connection in a short time.
We hope to continue to expand these programs in the coming years.
Community campaigns
Our work on local issues campaigns continues to be a key focus. Over the last year we’ve been actively mobilising residents to take action on about 10 different issues across Griffith.
This includes:
- A HUGE WIN on our combined campaign with our state and local reps to stop Qld Labor’s destructive plan to demolish and rebuild the Gabba Stadium for the Olympics. This demolition would have destroyed a much loved, enormous park, and a beloved public school. More than 2.5 years of rallies, letters, actions, and so many more tactics secured a win when the State Government completely backflipped on their plan under pressure from the Greens.
- Campaigning for a curfew and a limit on flights to give residents experiencing relentless flight noise a break.
- Working with residents to oppose the building of a high-rise retirement home smack bang in the middle of a major flood plane.
- Many more!
Housing and homelessness
It’ll be no surprise to anyone that rents and house prices continue to skyrocket, and the human impact of the housing crisis is something that won’t be lost on any of us. Every week my team and I speak to folks one rent increase away from homelessness, people in severe mortgage stress despite having two incomes, and from those being completely failed by Labor governments and left to wait years on social housing wait lists. The government continues to offer nothing more than lacklustre attempts to tinker round the edges of the crisis or in some cases actively make the crisis worse.
However, there has never been more attention or focus on the housing solutions the Greens are putting forward. It’s clear the majority of the country supports a freeze and cap on rent increases and our recent announcement to create a publicly owned property developer to build homes to sell and rent for cheap received huge supportive feedback. Pressure is also mounting on the Labor government to scrap the billions of dollars in tax handouts to property investors and to put that money into public housing instead.
The biggest highlight of the last year was definitely that we were able to win an extra $3 billion of brand new, direct investment in public and community housing. While at first the Government refused to negotiate, we were able to use a combination of our leverage in the Senate and community pressure, to win 6x more than what the government had originally wanted to invest in public housing.
This $3 billion is a drop in the ocean in terms of what is needed, but it’s also the only money actually being spent right now on building community and public homes. All the rest of the government’s programs and so called “new announcements”, including their Housing Australia Future Fund itself, haven’t yet built a single home.
In the last couple of months you might have seen that I’ve announced the Greens will push for a phase out of tax handouts for big property investors, including negative gearing and capital gains tax discount, nationally coordinated rent controls, and a larger investment in public housing, in exchange for supporting the Government's ‘Help to Buy’ and Build to Rent legislation.
By phasing out these tax handouts and investing the saved revenue in public housing instead, not only would we finally give millions of renters the chance to buy their first home, we would also finally see a substantial increase in Australia’s stock of public housing.
Finally, I’d just like to give an enormous thank you shout out to my brilliant team, and in particular the 30ish volunteers who contribute to our work every single week. It’s an incredible team effort, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything without these legends.
- Max