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

There used to be a social contract in this country. That social contract was that, if you worked hard and you contributed, you could get ahead. Getting ahead included owning your home. That social contract has been obliterated by a housing system that is now designed to serve the interests of the already very wealthy people in this country.

Labor came to office 3½ years ago promising change, and they've spent that time deliberately, knowingly, making the housing crisis worse. The housing market has become a machine for transferring wealth upwards, and Labor keeps that machine running because, in Labor's view, the line must go up. House prices must continue to rise, according to the Labor Party. Rents must continue to rise, according to the Labor Party. Profits must continue to rise for property speculators, according to the Labor Party. That is Labor's economic plan—endless growth for the wealthy, built on the misery of millions who can't afford their own home and who can't afford to make ends meet.

Labor defends the obscene tax breaks given to property speculators—negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount—that funnel public money into private fortunes. They pour billions into these subsidies, and they pour billions more into schemes that inflate demand instead of building homes. They refuse to freeze rents, and they refuse to build enough public housing because they don't want to upset the property class and property investors. Every policy Labor touches is designed to benefit the property class. Every dollar of so-called housing investment is carefully directed to keep prices high.

It is not a market. It is an absolute racket. It is a racket of the highest order, and ordinary everyday Australians are paying the price. The great class divide in this country today is now between those who are wealthy enough to own real estate and those who are too poor to own real estate. That is the great class divide in this country, where the path to security is owning property. If you can't afford to buy, you're trapped paying off someone else's mortgage forever. The social contract is falling apart.

The truth is that Labor needs the housing crisis. They need house prices to keep climbing so they can keep claiming the economy is strong. One of the great triumphs of neoliberalism has been to convince people that a better life is not possible. A better life is possible because it is all about political choices. I say to young people who believe—because the forces of neoliberalism want them to believe—that poverty and insecurity are somehow their fault: that poverty and that insecurity that you are feeling is not your fault. It is the result of political choices made by the political duopoly in this place, the Labor Party and the LNP. The housing crisis was created by governments, it is built on greed, and it will only end when we stop treating people's homes as an investment class or an asset class and start treating them as a human right.