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senate vote 2022-09-26#3
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2022-09-30 09:11:28
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Title
Matters of Urgency — Housing- Matters of Urgency - Housing - Nationwide rent freeze
Description
<p class="speaker">Glenn Sterle</p><p><i>(Quorum formed)</i>I inform the Senate that the President has received the following letter, dated 26 September, from Senator McKim:</p>-
- The majority voted against a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?id=2022-09-26.126.2) introduced by Tasmanian Senator [Nick McKim](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/tasmania/nick_mckim) (Greens), which means it failed.
- ### Motion text
- > *That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:*
- >
- > *The need for a nationwide rent freeze, given the biggest annual rent increases in fourteen years and rents growing seven times faster than wages in our capital cities.*
<p class="italic">Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:</p><p class="italic">The need for a nationwide rent freeze, given the biggest annual rent increases in fourteen years and rents growing seven times faster than wages in our capital cities."</p><p>Is the proposal supported?</p><p> <i>More than the number of senators required by the standing orders h</i> <i>aving risen in their places—</i></p> <p class="speaker">Nick McKim</p><p>I move:</p><p class="italic">That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:</p><p class="italic">The need for a nationwide rent freeze, given the biggest annual rent increases in fourteen years and rents growing seven times faster than wages in our capital cities.</p><p>There is nothing short of a full-blown rental crisis happening right now in Australia. In my home state of Tasmania, since 2016, the median rental rate in Hobart, where I live, has grown by 50 per cent. That is 50 per cent in six years. It is absolutely critical that we address this crisis in rental affordability, and in housing more broadly. If you are lucky enough to be able to rent a place, so many people cannot afford to pay their rent and where so many people cannot even find a place to rent because vacancy rates are too low.</p><p>The explosion in rental costs and the ensuing rental crisis represents a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich and, in general terms, from the young to the older. It is not by accident and not just bad luck by the tenants; this has been done and driven deliberately by successive Liberal and Labor governments. The class war by property owners and the banks has been going on for a long time, and, make no mistake, the tenants are losing the war. The Labor Party and the Liberal Party have backed in landlords and they have backed in the banks. They have backed them in to continue to make massive profits and they have done that by ensuring that the return for the banks and the return for the landlords is guaranteed by the taxpayer.</p><p>The great Australian dream is no longer that you can one day own a home of your own. The great Australian dream today is owning a property portfolio, with tenants who pay your income and who pay, ultimately, for your assets. So if you own a house and it is rented out, even though you may be renting it out for a loss, that loss is subsidised through tax breaks for you, paid for by the taxpayers. What that means, tragically, is that not only do tenants pay off their landlords was mortgage, they pay the tax that the landlords don't. On what planet is that fair or reasonable? It is an absolute scam, and the scammers are the political parties in this place that deliver on those tax breaks. In real terms, what that means for people on the ground is they are skipping meals, they are not paying power bills and they are not paying for much-needed medicine, just to keep a roof over their heads. In a country where a landlord can own 283 rental properties and still complain about the prospect of a freeze in rents, this is an obscenity. Enough is enough.</p><p>It is time to cap rents. We should do it for two years and then peg them to the CPI thereafter. That is just the start. We should scrap the capital gains tax discount, we should end negative gearing and we should actually start building enough homes so that everyone can have a home to live in. Most importantly, we need to shatter the class gap between those who own housing and those who don't.</p> <p class="speaker">Jess Walsh</p><p>I rise to speak on the motion moved by Senator McKim. The Albanese government recognises the challenges that Australians are facing because we talk to them every day, so we know families are struggling with a decade of low wages growth, cost-of-living pressures and rental affordability. The private rental market has been put under significant pressure as a result of strong numbers of people moving within states between towns and cities and people moving across state lines, putting pressure on particular rental markets. Also putting pressure on rental markets have been shrinking household sizes which, in turn, put pressure on the supply of private rentals. Major cities and regional towns are experiencing low vacancy rates and really fast-growing rental prices. This is forcing Australians into insecure housing arrangements like caravan parks and other temporary solutions. In a wealthy country like Australia, this is just not acceptable. We do understand how tough it is for Australian households. We know that long waiting lists for social housing are forcing vulnerable Australians into the private rental market. And we know that more Australians are being forced to rent because they've been unable to buy their own home, which is why our ambitious housing reform agenda is working to address the underlying causes of housing unaffordability, using the levers that we have available to us as a federal government to get more Australians into affordable homes.</p><p>But these challenges that we face today have of course not come on overnight. They've been very real challenges for the past 10 years—challenges that the former government took absolutely no interest in addressing. Those opposite oversaw shamefully low numbers of new social housing builds when they were in government. By 2020, seven years into their term, they had built only 7,500 new dwellings. Compare that with the more than 30,000 new dwellings from the previous Labor government over a similar period of time. But in their dying days the coalition finally had a lightbulb moment on housing policy and finally came up with one that they said would address housing affordability and help people own their home. And what was that solution? We of course will all remember that it was to force Australians to raid their own superannuation to be able to afford a house deposit—a policy that would have driven property prices up even further and left Australians with higher debt and depleted workers retirement savings. Why does the coalition hate superannuation? Why do they hate it so much? It was a policy that would have left even more Australians without financial security.</p><p>On the other hand, the Albanese government have a comprehensive plan to address prices and we are wasting no time getting on with it. We're establishing the Housing Australia Future Fund, investing $10 billion to build 30,000 new social and affordable housing properties. That of course is going to get more people who need them into those homes and it's also going to put downward pressure on rental prices and help really vulnerable families to access housing when they're fleeing family and domestic violence. In addition to that massive investment—an unprecedented $10 billion of federal investment in social and affordable housing—we're unlocking up to half a billion dollars through the National Housing Infrastructure Facility to invest in even more social and affordable housing. That is a move that will encourage investors, such as super funds, to invest in projects that drive down housing prices, rather than gutting workers' retirement savings and driving house prices up.</p><p>That's where we think the super funds can come into the housing equation, in partnering with government to invest in projects that create more homes and drive down prices. Again, we think that's a better option than forcing people to raid their own super in a desperate attempt to afford their own home while of course gutting their retirement savings and putting themselves in an even more vulnerable position in the future.</p><p>Our government is also helping Australians to enter the housing market and own their own home. We've brought forward the start of the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee to 1 October. That will help up to 10,000 Australians to purchase their first home. This joins the up to 50,000 Australians who are being assisted to buy their first home under the Home Guarantee Scheme. Our government is also introducing the Help to Buy program. That is going to help cut the cost of buying a home by up to 40 per cent, making it easier and cheaper for Australians to own their own home.</p><p>When it comes to rental affordability, our government is stepping up and bringing the states and the territories together, because that's what we do. We work with the state governments and the territory governments. We bring them together with us to solve the big challenges that Australians face. So, we're working with the state and territory housing ministers to explore innovative solutions to address these housing challenges. We're developing a new national housing and homeless plan that will form a key part of our agenda and we're introducing a national housing supply and affordability council to ensure the Commonwealth is playing its role in increasing supply and improving affordability. Our government is stepping up to bring new national leadership on housing—national leadership that was sorely missing under the previous government—because, while we recognise that some of the levers to fix these problems sit with state and territory governments, we also recognise that the previous government simply was missing in action on this question.</p><p>Now, we know the security that housing can bring to Australian workers and we also know that one of the key barriers to accessing housing is insecure work. The crisis of insecure work is a legacy of those opposite—one that they absolutely refused to admit to in their 10 years in government; one that they refuse to admit even exists. Coalition senators have said that insecure work is a Labor lie—it's a Labor lie. One of their ministers earlier this year called job insecurity 'made up issues'. So it was Labor lies and made up issues, despite the evidence right in front of them, including evidence about the links between insecure work and housing insecurity.</p><p>This was despite what they themselves were hearing from workers. These were workers who came and told their stories to, for example, the job security inquiry, led by my colleague, Tony Sheldon—stories of low pay; stories of low, irregular hours; stories of having no ability to provide stable income on a rental application. These were people who were working and having to live in caravan parks because they couldn't get enough secure hours to actually fill out a successful rental application. So fixing the very real crisis of insecure work is part of our government's plan to give people security at work and also in housing. The legacy that those opposite left behind is a crisis of insecure work, a decade of low wages growth and nothing—nothing at all—to help Australians afford a home.</p><p>We know the importance of good, secure jobs. We know they're a gateway to good, secure lives. We know that they're a gateway to good, secure housing as well. And we know what insecure work is doing to households and families. That's why we have a secure jobs plan, which is about giving workers the permanency and security that they need to plan for their future. We'll make secure work an objective of the Fair Work Act, making sure that the Fair Work Commission puts job security at the heart of its decision-making, and we're introducing a secure jobs code to ensure that taxpayer money spent through government contracts is being used to support secure employment too, because we know people need secure jobs and secure houses.</p><p>Our government takes these housing challenges very seriously. We're getting on with delivering answers to them. We know that having a good job is critical to good housing. We know we can't require the state and territory governments to freeze rents, as the Greens want us to. We know we can't force Australians to raid their retirement savings, as those opposite want us to as well. <i>(Time expired)</i></p> <p class="speaker">Paul Scarr</p><p>In speaking on this urgency motion, I'd first like to address some of the comments made by Senator Walsh, whose thoughts and views I deeply respect. But there are three points I'd like to make with respect to Senator Walsh's contribution.</p><p>First, in relation to the policy that the coalition went to the last election with, the policy was to give superannuation fund holders, especially the young, a choice. It wasn't a question of forcing; it was a question of giving them the choice, if they decided to do so, to take a certain amount out of their superannuation fund in order to get them into the housing market and buy their first home, the most important asset for the rest of their life. That's the first point.</p><p>Second, I believe that, in relation to the supply of housing, we need to be more creative, in terms of working with community organisations, being innovative—social housing doesn't necessarily have to be owned by state governments, federal governments or whichever government—and working with community organisations at the front line to try to get solutions for local communities. Some of the most passionate people in this space, as I'm sure everyone would agree, are those frontline community organisations that are dealing with this issue every single day.</p><p>The third point I'd like to make in relation to Senator Walsh's comments is on the question of supply—supply, supply, supply. We need more supply for people who are seeking to rent accommodation. That's the question. We need supply. Green tape and red tape are frustrating supply. I see it where my office is located, in Springfield, the south-west growth corridor of Queensland, the fastest growing region in Queensland, where the people who want to construct housing for new home buyers, for others, for renters et cetera are being frustrated by the green tape and the red tape. We need supply.</p><p>Regarding Senator McKim's urgency motion, whenever the Greens put forward a motion dealing with economics, I always go to my library and bring out my book called <i>Basic Economics</i> by Dr Thomas Sowell. I see what my book on basic economics says, because that always provides the answers. I only needed to go to page 45 of my book, <i>Ba</i><i>sic </i><i>Economics</i>by Thomas Sowell, to learn that the history of economics teaches us that rent controls do not work. Rent controls do not work. They might be proposed with the best of intentions—</p> <p class="speaker">Nick McKim</p><p>They don't work for the landlords, but they work for the tenants.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>-
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