Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the opposition's Housing Investment Probity Bill 2024. The coalition has a long history of attacking unions and workers' access to and influence over capital. This bill is a thinly veiled extension of this conservative campaign. The bill would prevent the Housing Australia Future Fund from investing in assets with Cbus Super, the industry fund for construction workers. We are in a housing crisis, and now is not the time to be preventing super funds from investing in housing projects. Both major parties are not taking the scale of this issue seriously enough. They have both entered this parliament with a handful of meek offerings that will do little to challenge the massive problems in our housing market.

In a wealthy country like ours, housing should not be something Australians struggle to get access to. It's shameful, and we need immediate, big and structural reforms. Tinkering at the edges will not cut it. Ask any young person in your life who you hang out with or who you know. They are struggling with facing a housing market that overwhelms them. Ask anyone who has just divorced and is starting out again in housing. They are also overwhelmed. And ask the women—the many women, too many—who are reluctantly staying in dangerous housing for want of decent, affordable options.

If we needed any more evidence on this, then just this morning we have today's Domain House Price Report, which shows increases in prices of houses and apartments in every capital city in the last three months. It's the first time in four years—and, of course, that's the entire regime of a Labor government—that we've seen such increases in all capital cities, all on Labor's watch. It is the first time for two years that we've seen this for units across our country and our cities. In Sydney and Melbourne, we're looking at the fastest quarterly growth in years. In Sydney a 2.6 per cent increase to a $1.7 million median house price is really frightening for people trying to get into the market. In Melbourne a 2.3 per cent increase to just over a million dollars is a three-year high.

Yesterday we had news of increases in homelessness of 10 per cent in our country since Labor came to power and a 14 per cent increase in homelessness for women. Right now the housing system in Australia is stacked in favour of property investors, banks and property developers. Just look at the tax concessions set to cost the public purse $176 billion over the next decade—these concessions turbocharge housing demand and take housing out of the realm of possibility for so many Australians who work diligently to save money every week—and watch the possibility for them to own their own home drift away into the future.

In Australia the crisis for renters and those trying to purchase their first home continues to get worse, and there are 37,800 people experiencing chronic homelessness across our country, living precarious lives without safe housing. Meanwhile, through our tax system, our major parties allow housing investors to access huge financial advantages to outbid first home buyers at auctions around our country and to drive rental prices through the roof. Alarmingly, less than one per cent of rental properties are affordable at minimum wage at present. Lack of housing is a runaway engine driving inequality in our country, and it's a major force of intergenerational inequality across the nation.

The two major parties have let the housing crisis get this bad, and it is a disgrace. Make no mistake, both major parties have knowingly created a housing policy environment that is driving runaway prices. The scale of this problem cannot be reduced to a lack of ambition or optimism amongst those governing our country. The housing crisis in Australia is a choice made by our governments, and both major parties continue to choose it through choosing policy failures.

My hope for every Australian is that Labor uses their majority in this parliament to change this. But they need to do more than just build 1.2 million homes by 2029—a program that we know from Treasury is already very unlikely. In fact, from their assessment, it won't be met. Supply is part of the answer, but ignoring the question of demand is a red flag, and if you think we can fix our massive housing crisis with tweaks to building regulation and rolling back housing regulation and deliver housing abundance—as said in the book that the Treasurer wants us all to read; and I have read it—then you've got rocks in your head.

Reducing regulation will not deal with our housing crisis in any significant way. As long as we're giving massive tax breaks to investors, they are significantly advantaged in our housing market, and we are just building homes for them to buy, not for the first home buyers and the renters in this country who really need a roof over their heads. Labor must reform negative gearing and the capital gains discount to ensure that the 1.2 million homes don't just get hoovered up by investors who will treat them as assets. Instead, we need hardworking Australians to have access to those homes, and they need to have access to affordable housing. The housing crisis can't be fixed by reforms that will just push up house prices while the key historic drivers of house price growth are overlooked.

While the major parties play politics with housing up here in Canberra, people all over Australia are experiencing the devastating reality of soaring rents, crippling mortgage stress, acute homelessness, increasing homelessness and a lack of truly affordable homes. So what do we need? Well, not this bill. What the major parties offer are tweaks and handouts, and the Greens are clear: only bold, structural reform will return housing to being a right to a roof over your head and not an investment.

Three things are critical. Firstly, we want to make housing more affordable for renters. The proportion of the population who are renting has been increasing significantly over recent decades across all age brackets, with growing numbers of Australians now expecting to rent for their entire lives. They face unlimited rent increases and rents that are unaffordable to people on the minimum wage in every one of our capital cities, and we need to cap rents. Tenancy laws in Australia give renters little security or ability to plan for the long term and to feel a sense of control over their home and little protection from those unlimited rent increases. It's essential that Australia strengthens tenancy protections for renters to ensure the growing proportion of people renting long-term are not treated as second-class citizens but are instead able to enjoy stable, affordable housing, which we know is so critical especially to kids living in those homes. It is essential that we end the prospect of unlimited rent increases.

Secondly, we need to make sure that housing becomes a roof-over-the-head proposition, not just an investment prospect. We particularly need to focus on the question of public housing. The declining role of the state in building housing stock in our country, both for sale to owner-occupiers and for affordable rent through the public housing system, has significantly contributed to the decline in housing affordability both for renters and for first home buyers in our housing market. If you look around the world, countries with affordable housing all have one thing in common: they have a large role for the public sector in housing. In a housing crisis, the supply of homes cannot be left to private developers, whose profits increase the more that house prices and rents go up. Thirdly, we need to phase out tax concessions for wealthy housing investors.

Australia Institute research tells us that the supply of new housing in recent times has outstripped population growth in the last decade. In the last 10 years, the population has increased by 15 per cent. Over that same period, the number of dwellings has increased by 19 per cent. Despite the supply of new dwellings growing faster than the population, house prices increased 75 per cent over that period. Building more homes alone won't fix the affordability housing problem in this country.

A major driver of house price increases is the increasing demand fuelled by the tax treatment of residential property in Australia, in particular negative gearing and the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount. Since the capital gains tax discount was introduced in Australia, house price growth has rapidly outstripped wage growth. We know that 82 per cent of the benefit of the capital gains discount goes to the top 10 per cent of earners. It is an obscenely unequal tax benefit that delivers to the top end of town—the very top 10 per cent of our income scale. What hope does a hardworking wage earner have to save a deposit and break into that market when they're competing with people with massive tax advantages in their back pockets at that Saturday morning auction? Phasing out these tax concessions would make housing more affordable and equitably distributed in Australia. If we truly want to solve our housing crisis, we have to reform capital gains tax and negative gearing.

Productivity and tax reform are on the agenda for this Labor government. Pressure is building for capital gains tax reform to be taken seriously. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns backs taking a fresh look at tax breaks that disadvantage first home buyers. A recent Essential poll found that half of Australians back action to reduce these tax concessions. Support out there is growing, and we know that many members of Labor's own party are supportive of tackling tax concessions too. They know in their hearts that these are unfair and must be changed. In 2017, even Jim Chalmers said, 'If you're not doing anything meaningful about negative gearing and the capital gains tax, then you're not doing anything meaningful about housing affordability,' and he was right. We know he was right, and many people in the Labor Party know that he was right.

Housing and homelessness will remain a key campaign and focus of the Greens this parliament. We care about people who are looking for housing to live in rather than hold as an investment. We care about people for whom rents in so many of our cities—where they can find a rental property—are so high that the cost of living means they are excluded and made incredibly insecure in their housing. Many of them get tipped over into homelessness. The crisis gets exponentially worse every day that the government fails to act appropriately. We are determined to end Australia's shameful housing and homelessness crisis. We know it can be fixed. There are clear policy proposals there. We need to make the right choices to make a difference for Australians who need a roof over their heads and need it now.