Adam Bandt has badged the Greens as the party for renters and first-home buyers, calling for the government to return to the forefront of building national housing stock.
Addressing the National Press Club on Wednesday, Bandt said that in 1945, the Commonwealth played a direct role in constructing 26% of all homes around the country.
In a similar model favouring today’s renters, the Greens now want to see the Commonwealth be responsible for building 610,000 new homes over the next decade.
The plan proposes to save first-home buyers of the public housing stock $249,000, or save renters of the public housing $320 a week.
“Our public property development is weighted towards rentals. If we flood the market with low-cost, good quality rentals, it will drive down rents in the private sector too,” Bandt told the NPC.
“Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry warned us that wilful acts of bastardry from successive governments — including failing to fix capital gains tax to make housing more affordable — are robbing young people of their future.
“If we don’t stop the bastards, house prices will get further and further out of reach, rents will continue to keep rising, and there will be fewer and fewer genuinely affordable places to live.”
The bold election pitch is aimed at the younger vote — millennials and gen Zs who, for the first time, will comprise the largest voting bloc in a federal election.
Taking aim at the unfair costs Australian renters are increasingly being saddled with during a cost-of-living crisis, Bandt said rising rents were not reduced whenever mortgage rates fell. This had the effect of punishing about 7 million Australians who rented their home.
“We also need to regulate rents like we regulate other essential services,” Bandt said, arguing that if the federal government could find consensus among states and territories to cap and regulate lower power prices, the same could occur for rent control.
“Since the start of the pandemic, rents have increased by 49%, much more than wages and incomes.
“Unlimited rents should be illegal. Landlords cannot be allowed to raise rents by whatever number they want. There has to be limits,” he said.
This week, the Greens released data showing that if a national 2% rent freeze had been implemented when they first called for one in 2023, the average household would save about $6,318.
Nationwide, the minor party says, renters would have saved a whopping $13.8 billion if their rent freeze policy had been adopted.
In addition to capping rent increases and banning unlimited rent rises, the Greens’ election housing policy proposes an end to rewarding owners of multiple properties.
This will involve reforms to capital gains tax (replacing it with an indexation method) so that it is no longer available to residential investment properties, and taking away the negative gearing eligibility of more than one investment property.
“If you want to buy more than two investment properties, that’s your prerogative, but you shouldn’t expect a giant government cheque to help you buy your third, fourth or 15th house, while millions have none,” Bandt said.
“These changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions could lead to more than 850,000 people living in their own home.”
Australia’s housing crisis had unfairly been blamed on migrants by the Coalition and was only being tinkered with around the edges by Labor, Bandt argued.
He said the real solution was in building more homes to drive down rents and give more people an affordable place to live.
“We can build homes people can afford. We can stop giving tax handouts to people who have five investment properties. These are tried and true methods, done in this country before,” Bandt said.
The Greens leader called for wealthy older voters to consider the future their children faced and to vote for a party that was committed to lasting reform that would give younger generations a semblance of the kind of home ownership security the Baby Boomer generation did.
“The housing system is cooked … and not in [the favour of gen Z or millennials],” Bandt said.
“If you’re older, ask your kids who they’re voting for. Vote for your kids and the future generations… I have parents tell me that even though they benefited from some of these schemes, they can see now that the effect is unfair, and they support reform so their kids will have a chance.”
Other key components of the Greens’ “people before profits” platform include putting mental health and dental care into Medicare, stopping new coal and gas, and transforming the taxes imposed on Australia’s top 150 billionaires (an annual 10% tax of total wealth) and big multinational corporations (40% excess profit tax).
The PBO has calculated that revenue collected by taxing the “excessive profits” of companies in the mining, gas, supermarket, banking, retail, and gambling sectors with turnovers of more than $100 million — or fewer than 0.1% of corporations operating in Australia — will raise $514 billion over the next decade.
The minor party wants to see economic rights restored to all so that people can obtain secure work and fair pay that covers food and a home, ensure income support above the poverty line is available, and receive a free, world-class education.
Publicly-owned renewable electricity was another idea the Greens are backing in, suggesting that it could be delivered close to cost price.
Bandt warned those privileged voters who were not at breaking point that Australian society found itself at a dangerous crossroads — failing to give tomorrow’s citizens a better life than what came before and governments that did not look after all people opened the way for the likes of Donald Trump to gain more power.
“At this election … you don’t have to choose between the timid and the terrible — you can vote for a future for all of us,” Bandt said.
“In a wealthy country like ours, everyone should be able to afford the basics.
“We can protect our environment and do what the science demands to stop the climate crisis from getting worse.”
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