The Senate has set up an inquiry into the rental crisis, a process designed by the Greens to pressure the Albanese government to agree to freeze or cap rising rents.
On Monday the Greens voted with the Coalition to delay consideration of Labor’s $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund (Haff) until 16 October, despite pressure from housing groups to pass the bill after the government pledged $2bn of direct funding for social and affordable housing.
The Greens and Coalition teamed up again on Thursday to establish the inquiry, which will provide an interim report by 23 September to provide input into the national cabinet process considering renters’ rights set up by the Albanese government.
The inquiry will consider rising rents and rental affordability; supply and demand; actions that governments can take to reduce rents or limit rent rises; and “improvements to renters’ rights”, including rent control, length of leases and no-grounds evictions.
Peak housing bodies have urged the Greens to pass the Haff to help secure $500m a year for social and affordable housing, while states and territories have rejected a rent freeze and warned shovel-ready projects are put at risk by the delay.
On Thursday the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations (Coalition of Peaks) added its voice to those calling for the bill to pass, warning that housing is too critical to fall victim to political game-playing.
“Housing is a key social determinant of health – our people need housing now. It’s time to stop procrastinating,” Scott Wilson, the chair of the South Australian Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation Network, said.
“Our politicians need to stop dragging this issue out and start taking action.
“There’s no guarantee that come October the legislation will pass, and even if it does, by the time you even start building houses we’re looking at 2025.”
Catherine Liddle, the chief executive of SNAICC National Voice for our Children, said “politicians are letting perfect get in the way of good, forcing our people to languish on the streets and in overcrowded and unfit housing”.
In question time, Anthony Albanese quoted at length from Greens’ housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather’s essay for Jacobin, in which he argued that the parliamentary conflict on the bill “helps create the space for a broader campaign” on housing affordability.
“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,” the prime minister said, quoting Chandler-Mather.
Albanese said: “Vulnerable people should not be the collateral damage in your manufactured political conflict.”
Chandler-Mather claimed he had been misrepresented through selective quotation.
The Greens have rejected calls to pass the Haff, arguing that despite securing $2bn of direct funding for social housing it must use the bill to prevent “unlimited” rent rises.
But in question time, Albanese argued that attempting the Greens’ policy would amount to telling “every property owner out there, you’ve got till October until the rent freeze comes on”.
“What do you think would happen? Do you think they’d put up their rents or do you think they would decrease them?”
“That is why your propositions are so ill thought-out and opportunistic.”
On Thursday the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, told Radio National the Albanese government is “prepared to show leadership at the national cabinet level on renters’ rights and other aspects of the relationship between landlords and tenants”.
Chalmers later told reporters in Canberra the Haff was “not the only part of our agenda” for housing, and the government would “get on with the job”, including through his meeting with treasurers on Friday.
Treasurers will discuss “how we advance the housing accord, how we make sure that in addition to the billions of dollars of commonwealth investment and the money invested by the states themselves, that we get the planning and zoning developments that we need, we rope in the industry and investors”, he said.
