Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share 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.