Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The housing crisis is putting people through hell. For renters, it's an endless cycle of house inspections, unattended maintenance issues and rent increases, and then it all starts again. Meanwhile, on Queensland's Gold Coast, there are plans for a Trump tower with 270 apartments likely starting at $5 million to buy.

Tell that to Tammy, a Gold Coast mum of two disabled kids who has applied for more than 30 rental properties and is worried that her family will become homeless if they can't find a new home before their lease ends in March. Australians need affordable housing, not Trump towers for the ultrawealthy. First home buyers aren't faring much better than renters. The cost of buying your first home in Brisbane has more than doubled in the last five years. In the last year, it's gone up by 20 per cent. If you finally manage to scrape together a deposit, you're outbid by investors adding yet another asset to their property portfolios. But this isn't your fault, because the housing crisis is not by accident; it's by design.

Labor is giving ultrawealthy property investors access to tax loopholes like the CGT discount and negative gearing that cost taxpayers billions of dollars every year, and they're making the housing crisis worse. The housing crisis is driving the cost-of-living crisis. The cost-of-living crisis then pushes up interest rates, and interest rates then increase the cost of your mortgage and your rent—what a vicious cycle. Until we make the ultrawealthy pay their fair share of tax and get rid of those unfair tax perks for property investors, we will be stuck in that cycle where the rich get richer and everybody else gets screwed.