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

What a dark day. Just hours ago, the Reserve Bank raised interest rates to 3.85 per cent. This is one of the shortest and shallowest rate-cutting cycles in three decades. What this actually means is that millions of Australians will bear the brunt of this interest rate rise because the government has not tackled two major causes of inflation: spiralling health costs and corporate profiteering. If you are a mortgage holder or renter, you're being hit by the RBA to fix the government's inflation problem. The government's priorities mean that everyday Australians are copping the pain, while banks, energy companies and property investors keep winning. People are rightly worried about their economic security, their wages and their futures. They are hurting.

We know that housing is a huge contributor to our inflation and the cost-of-living crisis. According to the ABS, housing was the largest contributor to annual inflation over the past 12 months, with a 5.5 per cent rise. Politics is all about choices. Just the other day, new data from ACOSS showed that the federal government spends more on tax breaks for wealthy property investors than it does on social housing, homelessness and rent assistance combined. That's a choice, a choice against the issues that are facing so many Australians in housing stress. This is $12.3 billion of foregone revenue towards the deeply unfair capital gains tax discount and negative gearing tax break while social housing waiting lists exceed 10 years in every major city.

Social housing makes up less than two per cent of dwellings today. That's down from 22 per cent of all housing built annually in the 1950s. We know things can be different. We are at a record low in social housing stock, which only makes persistent homelessness worse. Come to my city of Adelaide and you can see it on our streets and parklands every day and every night. There are nine preventable deaths every single day of people who have experienced homelessness. This is a national shame in our wealthy country.

It's clear that Labor cares more about investors with dozens of properties than it does about renters, first home buyers and people experiencing homelessness. Labor needs to stop making things worse. The solutions are clear. Our history shows us we can do this well and we can do it differently. We need to make corporate price gouging illegal. We need to end the tax breaks that help wealthy investors to hoard housing. This government must urgently slow housing inflation. Labor needs to stop treating housing like a game of Monopoly. It needs to scrap the tax breaks for wealthy property investors and to directly build public and affordable housing. Labor should be protecting households, not corporate profits.

Treasurer Chalmers recently said the government is open to tax reform to address intergenerational unfairness driven by this nation's dysfunctional property market. Well, it's time you did something about it, Treasurer. Even Mathias Cormann, who is now leading the OECD, has said that this government should be 'removing some of the favourable tax treatment of residential property ownership, including capital gains tax concessions and negative gearing'. In his words, this 'would help to cool demand and could help to mitigate upward pressure on house prices.'

There's growing pressure on the government to act. It's time to get on with it. There are solutions there. Let's implement them. Let's relieve some of the pressure that so many Australian families are facing, rather than making the problems worse with things like the five per cent deposit scheme, which just add heat and fuel rising house prices.