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senate vote 2023-11-15#6
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2023-12-08 15:36:52
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Title
Matters of Urgency — Housing- Matters of Urgency - Housing - Take action on rental increases
Description
<p class="speaker">Sue Lines</p><p>Senator McKim has submitted a proposal under standing order 75 today which has been circulated and is shown on the Dynamic Red:</p>-
- The majority voted against a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?id=2023-11-15.272.2) 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:*
- >
- > *We are in a rental crisis with more people experiencing rental stress and unable to afford a home. The Labor government must take action by stopping unlimited rental increases.*
<p class="italic">Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today the Australian Greens propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:</p><p class="italic">We are in a rental crisis with more people experiencing rental stress and unable to afford a home. The Labor government must take action by stopping unlimited rental increases."</p><p>Is consideration of the proposal supported?</p><p class="italic"> <i>More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—</i></p><p>With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clocks in line with informal arrangements made by the whips.</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">We are in a rental crisis with more people experiencing rental stress and unable to afford a home. The Labor government must take action by stopping unlimited rental increases.</p><p>As the motion states, we are in a rental crisis in Australia, and more and more people are experiencing rental stress and are unable to afford the basic human right of having a home to live in. This motion does call for the Labor government to take action by stopping unlimited rental increases. It is shameful that in this country renters in most places can face an unlimited number, an unlimited frequency and an unlimited scale of rent rises. In many cases, the number, the frequency and the scale of rent rises is enough to render people homeless.</p><p>Labor's rental crisis epitomises a broken social contract between the government and the people that it governs. Labor Housing Minister Julie Collins said the quiet thing out loud earlier this year when she said that Labor views houses as an investment and asset class in Australia. Well, I've got news for Ms Collins: houses are actually homes. Houses are homes, where people and their families build a place for themselves, buy a place for themselves or, in the case of about a third of the houses in Australia, rent a place for themselves to live. The broken social contract between this Labor government and its people represents an understanding that used to exist in Australia, where hard work, education and a reasonable job were keys to a fair crack at prosperity and a good life. This foundational belief, this foundational social contract, has been systematically dismantled by the Albanese government.</p><p>The plight of young Australians in particular—but not only young Australians—who rent today tells a stark story. That social contract—the one that represented an agreement, a contract that hard work, education and a reasonable job were the keys to a fair crack at a prosperous life—is broken, and no longer can it be said that hard work alone, that education alone, that a decent job alone is enough to have a good life in Australia. The new class division in this country is between people who own property and people who do not. That is the stark new class division that is emerging in this country—and it is stark and unforgiving. Those who are lucky enough—and I would suggest it's most people in this chamber, who own property—continue to prosper. Those who do not are condemned to the likelihood of a life of economic uncertainty.</p><p>ABS figures released today showed that wages grew by about 1.3 per cent. That is a small increase on inflation and that should be celebrated as real wage growth. But rents increased by 2.2 per cent over the same quarter. Rents are skyrocketing, and wages are not keeping up with skyrocketing rents. That is placing the dream of a home further and further out of reach for more and more people. Labor needs to act.</p> <p class="speaker">Gerard Rennick</p><p>I do have to agree with Senator McKim: we are in a rental crisis, a housing crisis, a cost-of-living crisis and an energy crisis. That, in my view, has been brought about by a very high immigration rate that is unsustainable. In the last reported quarter, the March quarter, we had 150,000 immigrants, which translates to 600,000 immigrants throughout the year, which is, interestingly enough, 200,000 more than what Labor forecast, or rather what Treasury—because they're the guys who actually run the country; overpaid muppets, but anyway—forecast. That is obviously going to increase demand.</p><p>The problem with price controls is that you will end up capping supply of new housing. What we've got is an inflation problem, and the cost of building is going up. Because the cost of building is going up, many builders are actually going broke and out of business, which is reducing the supply of new houses into the market. What we really need is for the RBA to get in touch with the real world and to actually use the levers available to them, not just qualitative easing, which in layman's terms is manipulating the price of money on the first Tuesday of every month. The problem with paper shuffling is, if you do too much of it for too long and you keep focused on models, you take your eye off the ball. The name of the game is to actually build things. True freedom is the child of affluence, and affluence comes from productivity. What we really need to do to fix this crisis is get people back on the tools and get them building, not just in housing but in other areas of the economy as well, such as dams, power stations, roads and factories.</p><p>There are two other levers I think the RBA have to look at, and I touched on this in a speech earlier this morning. One is quantitative easing. Governments have been brainwashed into thinking the only way that they can issue new capital in the system is by issuing bonds, but there is another form of capital, and that's called equity. Publicly listed corporations do this all the time: they go out and issue new capital. As a sovereign country, we can issue new capital as a means to increase supply.</p><p>What the RBA has done is lift interest rates—I've lost count—10 to 12 times in the last 18 months. That's had a devastating impact on demand, and it's had a devastating impact on supply. This is one of the things I get very annoyed with the RBA about, because they don't realise that increasing interest rates doesn't just dampen demand on the housing side but actually dampens supply on the housing side. It dampens supply on the small-business side. Small business, whether they're builders, bricklayers, fruit sellers, butchers or whatever, also borrow money in order to run their businesses.</p><p>It's alright for the big end of town: they can tap the equity markets, particularly the superannuation funds, because there's a lazy $3 trillion in cash sitting there that doesn't require work and is just managed by white-collar spivs in the ivory palaces of Sydney and Melbourne. So much for free markets, when 12 per cent of your income is taken from you and given to someone else you don't know! Actually, that's something we could do: we could make superannuation optional so that people can actually afford to buy their own homes as well.</p><p>The other thing I want to touch on is our macroprudential controls. In 1985 Paul Keating lifted all the capital controls. I can well remember—I was in grade 10 at the time—that was seen to be a great thing. But all that did was allow the volume of credit in the system to be controlled by foreign banks. What happened was the amount of foreign debt that the four major banks had went from $8 billion to $800 billion by 2008. Nearly all of that money was lent against housing. All that did was inflate house prices from four or five times earnings to 12 to 13 times earnings. And that, of course, when house prices went to 12 to 13 times earnings, put two parents back in the workforce, and now two parents are actually working for the foreign banks, rather than focusing on raising their children and being involved up at the school, where we desperately need more volunteers helping out with fetes and things like that. So we really need to reform our monetary system. This is a broad economy issue. Thank you.</p> <p class="speaker">Helen Polley</p><p>What we've seen in the debate here this afternoon is the Greens, who live in utopia, wanting to solve every problem that every person is facing. It is very noble, but the reality is that we're a party of government. The Greens never have to deliver. They can have their wish list and they can go out there and slam the government as often as they do. They play games all the time. They come in now and move a resolution in relation to renters. But when we were debating our Housing Future fund—$10 billion that the Albanese Labor government had put together to help alleviate the housing problems and the rental problems, which we are very aware of, but we are trying to find real solutions—what did they do? They stalled and they wouldn't support that legislation until they finally got a little bit more so that they could go out and do all their social media.</p><p>The reality is that we know we need more affordable and social housing in this country. We know there's a housing crisis. We actually know there's stress on people who are trying to make ends meet because of the difficulties we're facing with higher mortgages, rising interest rates and inflation. But what we're doing as a government, at the National Cabinet level—what we did back in August—is work with the states and territories to get a commitment to a better deal for renters, to harmonise and strengthen renters' rights across Australia.</p><p>But if we tried to adopt the solutions the Greens keep talking about, people outside of governments would not invest in real estate to provide that extra home stock from private investors, because they need to have a return. So, the Greens live in utopia. And unfortunately, as I've said many times in this chamber, when they could actually address some of these very serious issues, as we've seen on climate change over the years, if they don't get exactly what they want then they don't vote in support of the government of the day, which we saw when we were in government last time. As a government we're acknowledging how difficult it is out there. People of all ages are facing a crisis in relation to being able to afford a mortgage, to afford rent. And we know that homelessness is a serious issue in this country.</p><p>We want to address that. That's why we've done things like making sure we give more support to women and children who are fleeing domestic violence, because women cannot leave a situation if they don't have somewhere to go. So we need more housing stock so that women don't have to stay in those very dangerous circumstances. At the end of the day, every mother will put their child first each and every day of the week. That's what they do. So if they don't have social housing or affordable housing, they cannot leave that environment. It's those mothers and those children who risk their lives. That is really the issue here today. So we need affordable housing. We need social housing.</p><p>Instead of working with the government of the day and supporting us so we can get better outcomes, the Greens move these motions so they can get their clicks on social media, beat up on the Labor government, when in fact if they work with us we will get better outcomes, because at the end of the day we're a Labor government who actually relates to people who need our help. We believe in giving people a helping hand—a hand up, not a handout—because that's what people want; that's what Australians want. And there is no bigger threat to any individual than the threat of being homeless—young people ending up on the streets. I was in Melbourne not so very long ago, and you could not walk half a block in the city of Melbourne without seeing homeless people. There were young people, women—young women—and people that obviously have some mental health issues. They don't belong on the street. They deserve to be cared for and to have a safe, secure home. That's what we're working to provide: more social and affordable housing. So I ask the Greens to reconsider. Instead of just knocking this government, work with us.</p> <p class="speaker">Ralph Babet</p><p>I understand Senator McKim's intention with the Greens' urgency motion on the rental crisis, but, unfortunately, I cannot support it, because of basic economics. Price caps are not the answer. We all know that. They have never worked. They will never work. The Australian people are hurting because they want to see action from their government, but, unfortunately, the government is fuelling the fire of inflation with the big migration and big, wasteful spending. Rent caps may appear attractive on the surface, but they are not the solution. In fact, they'll make the problem worse. As our good friend Senator Scarr keeps saying, price caps do not work, because of basic economics. He says it all the time. If there is one rule for economic success, it should be this: do the opposite of what the Greens say or recommend.</p><p>Price cap policies often worsen the very problems they seek to address. This has been shown across the world, in places like Paris, Berlin and San Francisco. Overseas experience has shown that rent controls lead to many unintended consequences, including reduced supply, higher housing costs and more bureaucratic control. Forget artificial price controls; the real solution is actually very simple. Just increase supply. But how do we increase supply? That's also very simple. I'll tell you how to do it. We've got to reduce regulations on land developments and to fast-track building approvals. We must incentivise supply by eliminating unneeded taxes, duties and levies on land. Increased supply will naturally reduce rents. Socialism, unfortunately, is not the answer. It'll only lead to greater problems, a lower quality of life, higher prices on absolutely everything and a reduction in our standard of living. Make capitalism great again.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>-
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