Henry Kissinger once said that university politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
But as the costs of the government’s delayed housing fund mount, Parliament was reminiscent of a student council at times on Wednesday.
Labor’s $500 million-a-year fund is caught up in a fight with the Greens in the Senate.
In the government’s sights is the Greens’ fresh-faced spokesman on that issue, Max Chandler-Mather.
Depicting the Greens (and the 30-year-old Mr Chandler-Mather) as student politicians and social media poseurs, Treasurer Jim Chalmers recently said their campaign was “more about TikTok than housing stock … retweets than renters”.
In question time on Wednesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese produced a recent opinion piece by the Greens MP to make the same observation.
In a piece for Jacobin this month, Mr Chandler-Mather writes that the parliamentary stoush over Labor’s Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) “helped create the space for a broader campaign in civil society”.
“Allowing the HAFF to pass would demobilise the growing section of civil society that is justifiably angry about the degree of poverty and financial stress that exists in such a wealthy country,” he wrote.
Mr Albanese seized on what he said was evidence that the Greens were blocking the construction of new homes because it would create a favourable climate for radical politics.
“This isn’t about the Australian people; this is about them,” he said. “They want people to stay in poverty so they can rally against it.”
The Greens and Coalition moved to defer any further debate on the legislation until mid-October.
NSW’s Housing Minister Rose Jackson says that is coming at the expense of new housing developments that the state has “ready to go on the ground” but with “nothing to submit applications to”.
‘Social housing will decline’
Mr Chandler-Mather was on his feet protesting that he had been misrepresented.
The rest of the piece argues that the $10 billion fund (returns on its investments fund housing) provides a false sense of progress on housing when figures show the number of the nation’s overall public housing dwellings will fall while rents will rise.
“Social housing in Australia will actually decline to a historical low of 3.4 per cent of total housing stock,” he wrote.
“In comparison, the (OECD) average is 15 per cent. In comparable countries like Austria, over 20 per cent of housing is community or public.”
Could politicking change any of this?
One major development since Mr Chandler-Mather’s piece was published has been the government committing to $2 billion in funding to accelerate social housing construction.
That’s four years’ worth of housing expenditure under the stalled fund, which the minor party has claimed credit for and even Mr Albanese linked to the Senate obstruction when he announced it.
A previous Labor-Greens showdown on climate came down to an intractable difference; the minor party demanded a halt to all new coal and gas exploration.
That would require tearing up billions of dollars in export contracts – a red line for Labor.
This time the Greens have made the condition of their support a rent freeze co-ordinated by state governments.
Party leader Adam Bandt on Wednesday said such a reform was possible, citing the examples of Victoria (where a cap was imposed temporarily during the pandemic) and the ACT, where a Greens-Labor coalition has brought in an annual cap on rental increases of 10 per cent of inflation.
National cabinet would be the vehicle for co-ordinating a national rent freeze: Seven of its eight seats are held by Labor leaders.
One of those, NSW Premier Chris Minns said on Wednesday that international evidence showed rent controls have negative economic consequences.
“If I thought a rent freeze … would work, I’d do it,” he said. “But I don’t think it would.”
