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The Greens and the federal government have finally come to an agreement to get Labor’s cornerstone $10 billion housing policy through parliament as soon as this week after months of protracted negotiations and delays.
The Greens failed to secure an agreement to limit rent increases across the country, but party leader Adam Bandt said it had secured an extra $1 billion for public and community housing, which will secure its support for Labor’s Housing Australia Future Fund bill.
Greens leader Adam Bandt and spokesperson for housing and homelessness Max Chandler-Mather in parliament on Monday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
He said that was on top of the $2 billion social housing accelerator to help jurisdictions build more affordable homes, announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in June.
“That means that there’s $3 billion going out the door this year,” Bandt said on Monday afternoon.
“That was never on the table when the negotiations started. That’s $3 billion dollars for public and community housing that the government initially said they couldn’t find.”
Bandt thanked the government for finding the extra money and confirmed the party’s support for the government’s bill to invest in extra housing supply.
“The Greens are in a position where we will support the government’s housing legislation and be prepared … to pass it through the Senate this week,” he said.
Albanese said he was pleased the government’s Housing Australia Future Fund now has majority support in the upper house.
“[The housing fund] includes 30,000 additional social and affordable homes, including for women and children escaping domestic violence, including for veterans and including to fix up remote houses,” he said in question time.
The prime minister said the extra $1 billion announced on Monday would be invested in the National Housing Infrastructure Facility “to build more homes for Australians who need them”.
“I thank the crossbenchers in this chamber and in the other chamber for joining with the Labor government to make sure this is done,” he said.
The deal comes after months of increasingly heated debate between Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather and the government over Labor’s proposed $10 billion housing fund, from which returns of at least $500 million a year would be used to fund social and affordable housing.
The Greens had initially asked for a suite of changes including $5 billion a year in direct federal spending on social and affordable housing and a national two-year freeze in rents aided by federal funding.
Negotiations hit several roadblocks, and the Greens reduced their ask while the government offered non-financial changes including turning the $500 million spend from the fund into a minimum instead of a cap. Before the winter parliamentary break the Greens successfully delayed debate on the legislation in the Senate until October.
Last month, the federal government locked in an agreement with states and territories to set a stretch target to build 1.2 million new homes over five years aided by $3 billion in federal incentives to help meet that goal.
Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said he was disappointed the party did not win rent freezes, but that fight will continue.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Despite agreeing to support the bill, the Greens were not able to get the government to budge on coordinating a national approach to capping or freezing rents, and that will now become the party’s focus.
Chandler-Mather said there would be future chances to secure those rental caps and freezes, but he was “upset and angry” the government didn’t agree to it.
“They saw the pain that renters are suffering and they decided to do nothing for them,” he said.
“But I should also be clear that this fight … to fundamentally change the relations between the property industry and property developers and one-third of this country who rents is not going to be won in a few weeks.
“We haven’t stopped. I mean, let’s be very clear. There is future legislation coming up right now and over this term of parliament that we will use to secure and push for a freezing cap on rent increases.”
He said securing such an outcome could take years.
“Now if we get to the next election – and maybe this is what it’s going to take – and Labor lose a bunch of new seats to the Greens because they ignore the one-third of this country who rents, then so be it, that may be what needs to happen,” he said.
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