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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

The Government’s housing policy could be dead in the water.

On Monday, the Greens chose to block the legislation – by deferring the vote on the bill until October.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says The Green’s delay is the same as rejecting it, and he’s seeking urgent legal advice about whether it could be a trigger for a double dissolution of parliament – something that would take us to an early election.

Today, Greens spokesperson on housing, Max Chandler-Mather, reveals why the Greens blocked the bill, the conversations with Labor behind the scenes, and what he thinks could have gotten a deal done.

It’s Thursday, June 22.

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Archival tape – Reporter 1:

“The federal government has a fight on its hands this week trying to push its embattled Housing Australia Future Fund through Parliament. It’s currently being held hostage.”

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“Those in that corner, Mr. Speaker, they deal in protest, we deal in progress. They see issues to campaign on, we see challenges to act on. They want to build their profile, we want to build more homes.”

Archival tape – Reporter 2:

“Labor is threatening a double dissolution election as the Greens team up with the Coalition to block its signature $10 billion policy.”

RUBY:

So, Max, this week the Greens joined forces with the Coalition to force a delay on the Government's housing bill, which is the Housing Australia Future Fund, for another four months. Tell me why?

MAX:

Well, for months we have pointed out to Labor that Labor's Housing Australia Future Fund will see the crisis get worse for two reasons. One, it doesn't guarantee any money until 2024-25, and then only then it's going to spend $500 million, and only build up to 6000 social and affordable homes a year when the shortage is 640,000 homes, and increases by much more than 6000 homes every year. So by the end of Labor's five year plan, as it stands, there will be more people waiting for social and affordable housing than there was at the start of the plan.

And our second concern was it does nothing for the one third of this country who rents. And right now rents are skyrocketing, and the Reserve Bank of Australia actually thinks that rents are going to go up even faster over the next 12 months. And every person evicted out of a private rental, is someone who may end up joining the ten year long queue for public housing, which means that the demand for public housing will be expanding at a faster rate than Australia is building homes and so on.

For those two key reasons we thought, it's not right that when the budget can find $12 billion a year in tax concessions for property investors, that the government only wants to spend $500 million every year on housing, and do nothing for the one third of this country who rents.

RUBY:

And so this has been going on for a long time now. For months we've heard that The Greens and the Labor Party have been negotiating over this bill. But this week Anthony Albanese, he accused you of playing quote “juvenile student politics”.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“Well, let me say this. This isn't student politics. What happens here affects the country. And instead of hyperventilating like a debating team, you need to bring people together to get things done.”

RUBY:

In the past. Penny Wong said that by blocking this bill The Greens were putting women who are fleeing domestic violence at risk of not being able to find a home.

Archival tape – Penny Wong:

“You know, this man's ego, this man's ego matters more than housing for women fleeing domestic violence, and older women at risk of homelessness. What sort of party are you?”

RUBY:

So I'm curious, behind the scenes, have you had negotiations with Labor at any point or is what we've been seeing in public, which has been, I think it's fair to say, tense and confrontational at times, is that the extent of the two parties' efforts to agree here?

MAX:

No, We have had private conversations, and look, for months they have said it's impossible for them to find any direct spending for public and affordable housing. And it should be clear that as a result of our pressure, up until last weekend, that the time of recording Labor said there's no extra money in the budget for public and affordable housing. And then all of a sudden we managed to eke out of them an investment of $2 billion, right now, that will be dispersed over the next two weeks, not attached to the Housing Australia Future Fund. It's being spent and it's going to start building social homes straight away. And I think that's a sign that actually the fastest and best way to invest in public housing, is to invest directly in public housing. That might sound a bit radical, but just like you're building schools and hospitals, we think the government should invest in that directly. And our frustration on that is that now that they've proven that you can spend money directly on public and affordable housing, why not do that every year and increase the amount? So we actually start to tackle the scale of the crisis.

In terms of negotiations, we're also obviously pushing very much for the federal government to coordinate a freeze on rent increases, or at least make unlimited rent increases illegal, something the federal government has the power to coordinate by a national cabinet like they did on energy price caps.

So, yeah, you're right. The debate has got pretty tetchy. And I think I think it's sort of revealing some of the insults they've made. They've also yelled at me in Parliament and told me to grow up, and things like that. And I think that speaks to a really serious disconnect between, I think, the Prime Minister and the people in Labor, sort of, most forcefully making these insults. And the millions of people who feel like the political system has left them behind. And I think they think it's somehow so radical or unreasonable to suggest there should be limits on rent increases, or we shouldn't invest enough money so that we actually start to put a dent in the scale of the shortage of public housing. But actually, for a lot of people outside of Parliament House, they think that's a pretty reasonable thing.

RUBY:

I want to come back and talk a bit more about your concerns about the rental market. But before we do, I mean, the government is now saying that it might not even try and pass the HAFF bill at all. The Housing Minister, Julie Collins, says that she's looking at what options are available to us. So if this is actually the end of the line for the Housing Australia Future Fund, are you prepared for the Greens to shoulder the blame for that, for the loss of 30,000 homes that would have been built if, if the Greens had allowed this bill through the Senate this week?

MAX:

Well, firstly, let's be clear. The only reason the Government is building homes right now is because the Greens held out and secured that $2 billion. On the question of whether or not the government is just going to walk away. That's a question for the Labor Party. The Senate has passed a motion that said that they will now consider the Housing Australia Future Fund bill, on October 16th, after deliberations by National Cabinet on renters rights. So if Labor really want to withdraw it when the Senate is fully prepared to consider it in October, that's a question for the Labor Party. What the Greens would like out of this next few months, is a negotiation to secure increased ongoing spending for public and affordable housing, and national renters rights that include limits on rent increases. Because if we do not limit rent increases, and the Reserve Bank is saying that rents are going to go up even faster over the next 12 months, if you think what's happening with energy bills is bad, just imagine what happens when you've got over 8 million renters in this country, 62% of them already in financial stress, and rents go up even faster over the next 12 months. How many more people will be sleeping in their cars? How many more people will be sleeping in tents, being evicted, moving back in with their parents, as a result of the government's failure to act on limiting rent increases in the same way they coordinated limits on energy bills.

RUBY:

Let's talk a bit about rent freezes, then. One of the biggest criticisms of a rent freeze is that it could actually reduce the supply of housing. So the theory goes that if a landlord can't charge as much as they want for a property, there is less incentive for them to become a landlord at all. And that's a problem because we need the private market working right now, at a time in which we have a housing supply problem. And it's true, isn't it, that a rent freeze, while it might help stop some renters being displaced in the short term, it does run the risk of reducing the supply of rental stock longer term.

MAX:

Well, firstly, Victoria had a temporary freeze on rent increases during the pandemic, and two things happened. Rents declined for the first time in a long time, by the way. And actually the number of private dwelling commencements increased over that period. Now, it may not be that a freeze on rent increases supply, but it certainly didn't put a damper on it. And what's useful about that example is that it is in an Australian context. Secondly, the key question for a freeze on rent increases is does it work in the sense that, does it bring rents down? And the answer to that, overwhelmingly, a lot of evidence around the world is, where rents are regulated, rents come down. In Berlin, they had a temporary freeze on rent increases, rents dropped by 8% and in fact the rest of Germany rents increased at a 60% higher rate, where they weren't capped or frozen. Now on the question of supply, a lot of this is relied on hearsay and manipulation of a lot of evidence. A lot of studies around the world have found that, for instance, in Massachusetts, where they did remove rental regulation, there was no increase in supply. A study in New Jersey of a bunch of cities through New Jersey found that there was no discernible impact on the supply of housing. But crucially, if we're going to talk about the supply of housing, well, if a property developer doesn't want to build a home because they can't charge really high rents, and instead we use those that land, construction materials, and skills, to build good, affordable public housing instead. Or affordable housing for essential workers, then we’re better for it.

RUBY:

Sure. But wouldn't a better and perhaps less risky way to deal with this be, not a hard cap, but instead capping the amount that landlords can increase rents? So one suggestion has been to cap it around the inflation rate. So a landlord could only raise rent by 6% to 7%.

MAX:

Yeah, well, look, we're willing to negotiate on that, absolutely. And certainly the ACT has, basically, a cap on rent increases linked to inflation. Ideally, I think if we are willing to discuss caps on rent increases, ideally you don't attach that to inflation because you then have an inflation rent spiral, where rents and inflation keep going up by the same amount, and you have a really big problem. And so for instance, in Spain, they capped rents at 3% every year, in areas where there was really high rental inflation. So yeah, we're certainly willing to look at that.

And look, there's a broader economic argument here. In some of the more recent Reserve Bank of Australia reasoning for increasing interest rates, they pointed to unexpectedly high rental inflation. Now one of the ways to start bringing down inflation now, in the same way that the government concluded that to bring down inflation they needed to cap energy prices, is also to start looking at capping rental prices. And the reality is that the Prime Minister chairs a national cabinet right now, where all but one of the seats on that national cabinet is held by a Labor Premier, or First Minister and chaired by a Labor Prime Minister, and they’re currently discussing harmonising renters rights across the country. There is a real opportunity here for the Prime Minister to take some national leadership, put money on the table, and properly incentivise either, a freeze on rent increases or, as he pointed to, some form of cap on rent increases.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this.

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Archival tape – Jim Chalmers:

“And what the Greens showed in the Senate, Mr. Speaker, is they care more about retweets than renters. They care more about TikTok than housing stock. When it comes to the crunch, Mr. Speaker, with all of the flowery speeches and all the rhetoric in there in this place. When it actually came to the crunch, when the Greens had the opportunity to work with Labor, to build more social and affordable homes, or to side with the coalition of cookers, which sit opposite, they chose the coalition of cookers.”

RUBY:

Max, you're 31 I believe, which makes you, I think, one of the first politicians to come from a generation that can't necessarily see itself affording a home, that has grown up in this supercharged housing market. Can you tell me a bit more about how that informs your position right now? And, do you think that most of the people that you share the Parliament with, actually understand how bad the crisis is for this generation?

MAX:

No, I really don't think they get it. One of the remarkable things is sometimes you get here the Treasurer, or the Prime Minister, or the Social Services Minister, get up in Parliament and talk about their increase to the Commonwealth rent assistance, and say “we are doing something for renters. This is the biggest Commonwealth rent assistance increase in a long time.” And then you realise that actually only a small proportion of renters get it, and those that get it are only going to get an extra $1.70 a day. And I remember sitting there in Parliament recently and thinking, it was actually a proper realisation, that they just do not understand. And look, you're right, I come, I've been a renter… I've never owned a home in my life, rented my entire adult life, and that there's a visceral experience that a lot of my friends and acquaintances have had growing up together, and it’s things like copping an unfair rent increase and knowing you can do nothing about it. I remember asking one of my previous landlords to move a giant pile of trash in the yard for a year. Eventually we issued a breach notice, and his response was to rock up the next day unannounced, and start threatening to evict us, which he did then, by refusing to renew our lease fairly in about three months time. And what that means is you're in a constant state of uncertainty. You often feel like a stranger in your own home, a home my partner and I loved, thought that we were going to be able to spend years in. We got kicked out of, unceremoniously because we didn't want a giant trial of passion trash that included fibro in the yard. And at the same time, obviously now, and I have it easy, obviously I now got a really good wage, but it's still going to take years, right? And even on my great wage to save up for a deposit on a house, and for the vast majority of people, not just my generation, but also the people in older generations who missed out on this, the reality is they're looking down the barrel of some of the… Australia on many reports is one of the worst places to be a renter in the developed world. And I just don't think most people in Parliament in the Labor Party get that experience of no longer having certainty, or comfort, or any sort of dignity often. The indignity of, basically, of having a landlord come throw their weight around and allow them to do anything they want, when you often know you're in the right is, just an experience I don't think they understand. And when we've been locked out of owning a home as a generation, and when the federal government is pumping up house prices with the capital gains tax concessions and negative gearing, people look at the government spending $12 billion on those tax concessions, and not really giving renters anything, and I think reasonably start to conclude that we have a political class that largely is completely unsympathetic to the experience of increasingly a majority of Australians.

RUBY:

And, Max, when we look at the big political battles that have played out between the Labor Party and the Greens, traditionally that's been over climate change, and we could go back a long time to talk about that. But why don't we stick with this year with this Parliament? A few months ago the Greens were asking for no new coal or gas projects to be approved in return for their support to pass the safeguard mechanism. In the end, though, the Greens did pass that policy without getting that concessions. So, why is it that housing has become something that the party is willing to hold out on, but emissions policy wasn't?

MAX:

Well, firstly, I think we were able to extract significantly more on the safeguard mechanism than Labor has been willing to concede on housing.

We managed to have a hard cap on emissions, which was a substantial qualitative shift under Labor's original safeguard mechanisms, pollution could actually go up.

RUBY:

Sure, but it's not the same as stopping new coal gas projects.

MAX:

Of course, and I suppose maybe to make a comparison, we obviously started with a demand for $5 billion a year, ongoing, for public and affordable housing, and $1.6 billion on the table to incentivise a freeze on rent increases. I would argue a similar compromise from the Labor Party would be rather than $500 million every year, maybe invest up to one and a half or $2 billion every year in housing, and maybe they don't want to come to a freeze on rent increases, but maybe they negotiate some form of cap on rent increases, as we discussed. That would mean the Greens didn't get a freeze on rent increases and the money we wanted for public and affordable housing. But it does mean that would be a qualitative shift in what Labor's proposing. And look, for months Labor has not given any ground at all, and now we have managed to extract $2 billion that's being spent right now, not attached to the half, but that's a one off spend and there's actually, as yet, they still haven't shifted at all on renters, and they still haven't shifted at all on increased ongoing fund, not a single dollar over the $500 million a year they currently only want to spend on social housing. So I think really one of the questions and certainly a lot of people in our party room have started to ask is, “well, why Labor being so intransigent”, especially — and we've put them this privately — when it would be broadly politically popular for them to come out and say, “you know what, the housing crisis has got much worse than we anticipated. We've got a pretty big budget surplus and a lot of extra revenue coming in. Let's commit to a few extra billion dollars a year on public housing. And look, while we can't come to a freeze on rent increases in the same way we capped energy prices, I think we need to start thinking about capping rents.” And I think that would be broadly popular. And so I think one of the bigger questions is why is Labor holding out so aggressively?

RUBY:

I'm sure that Labor would argue that it's the Greens that are holding out aggressively here. Do you think that housing has become more important to Greens voters than climate change has?

MAX:

I think you can care about more than one thing at the same time. I think that the other thing here is that increasingly a lot of people who are, you know, whether they are long term renters, or that layer of mortgage holders who bought a home recently, and their mortgages are really putting them under serious financial stress. There's a broader broader layer of people who feel like the way the economic system functions now is completely against their interests, and functionally understand that neither major party really has a solution to that. And so there is a broadening social base that the Greens represent, I think from those two social classes who feel at the very least like the Greens are going to fight for them. And certainly, you know, in Griffith, in my electorate, 48% of residents there rent. We had 1000 volunteers, the vast majority of them were renters of all ages, by the way, but the vast majority of them are renters who, you know, increasingly this is a social base of people who demand and want political representation and changes in politics that improve their material lives, and don't really feel like it's coming from the major parties and certainly not from this Labor government. And so I think there's a broad willingness across the movement in the party that it's time to make a bit of a stand on this. And that doesn't mean we don't negotiate, but it does mean that we just don't accept crumbs from a Labor government who we know have billions of dollars in the budget ready that could be spent right now on solving this crisis.

RUBY:

And back on those negotiations, there are many in the senate, crossbenchers like David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, as well as people who work in the housing sector, the Community Housing Industry Australia CEO, who are willing to support Labor on this bill. They say that it's a good start. It's a foundation that could be built on. They think that the Labor government actually would build on it as well. So why not take a more constructive approach of passing the bill and then advocating for it to be added to?

MAX:

Well, look, a lot of them have been saying that for months, and with all due respect to them, if we'd listened to them months ago, we wouldn't have secured $2 billion that's being spent right now. The other thing to say is I think one of the reasons they're saying that is they've reached the conclusion that they will not shift off their current plan. And actually, you know, even a lot of the people in the housing sector will, and David Pocock has said before, this is not going to solve the crisis, it's not even going to come close. But we've concluded that Labor are being so stubborn that we just don't think they're going to shift. Now perhaps, maybe we have a little bit more faith that we can push Labor to recognise that this is not a second tier issue, but this is of the same order of magnitude, same level of crisis as they treated energy prices. And I think that there is this question around, well won't Labor, you know, maybe we can just convince Labor to do something more in the future, and to that I'd say there's no evidence of that's the case. The time to change legislation is when it's going through Parliament. You don't pass it through Parliament when you know that it will lock in failure, and then hope that out of the goodness of their heart the Labor Party will change that in the future. Given right now we have, the Greens have maximum leverage, we built a, you know, as much public pressure as we possibly could and it was still a struggle even to eke out just $2 billion for social housing. Why would anyone think that outside of that experience, when Labor have no obligation, once the legislation passes to negotiate, that they will do anything more?

RUBY:

And just finally, we touched earlier on how personal and how confrontational this debate has become at times, particularly between yourself and the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. I just wonder, would you say that you're enjoying this fight with Labor, Max? At times you do kind of seem to be.

MAX:

No! Look, I mean, obviously.. and I would argue that, to be honest, I haven't. I am very careful not to make any personal remarks about anyone, although I would note that that's not the same for the Labor Party. And well, look, ultimately it doesn't really affect me.

I think it does.. it frustrates me because it reflects one of the ways that, I think, both major parties go about politics that does alienate a lot of people, which increasingly I think that, you know, you had the Treasurer get up yesterday and start these funny lines about TikTok and social media and and I think it's a juvenile way to engage with a serious political issue. And why aren't they getting up and raising the technical arguments, or the economic arguments, why they wouldn't want to spend more money on public and affordable housing every year? I'd argue they don't do that because they don't have those arguments, and they're resorting to personal attacks because they've lost that argument. And I think the other thing to say is I often find it extraordinary that you watch these people get up and make these personal attacks. And while they might be attacking me, what I don't think they realise they're doing is alienating a lot of people who might they themselves be a lifelong renter, or someone who feels completely locked out of the political system, and watch someone get up, say, like the Prime Minister with his four investment properties, and and think well — and not make any technical arguments, by the way, why they won't come to the table and the Greens demands — and think,” well this is the sort of contempt that I feel politics shows me every day.” And I think it is a reminder, it's been a reminder for me why so many people are fed up with politics, because it too often resorts into this tit for tat, where what would be good is that the prime minister gets up and said, “here's the technical reasons why we can't spend $5 billion a year on public and affordable housing and actually start to tackle the crisis. Here are the reasons that I don't support any limit on rent increases and why I think unlimited rent increases should be legal.” Fine. Let's have that technical argument. But don't resort, I think, to silly personal political attacks and I think it reflects poorly on Parliament, but also more broadly, I think it alienates a lot of people from a political process they probably often rightly conclude doesn't care about them.

RUBY:

Max, thank you so much for your time today.

MAX:

Thanks, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

After 95-year-old woman Clare Nowland was tasered, top NSW police covered up the details, according to internal emails obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald.

The emails show that the original draft of the press statement that made the incident public, included an admission that Nowland had been tased by a police officer. But that senior officers deleted the word, before it was published.

And…

More low-income Australians have run out of savings, and are having to borrow money or sell their belongings to fund their daily spending, according to a new report by investment bank UBS.

In the survey, Australian consumers reported interest rate hikes and cost of living pressures are hitting savings hard, with the bank concluding a mid-year economic slowdown is likely.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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