When the Greens voted with the Coalition to delay Labor’s signature housing bill, the government labelled them everything from an “unholy alliance” to “the axis of evil”.
But after months of acrimonious debate including threats of a double dissolution, the minor party finally agreed this week to pass the $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund bill in return for a further $1bn for public and community housing – but no cap or freeze on rents.
The property industry, community housing groups and advocates for people experiencing homelessness and housing stress all cheered the peace deal.
But it was not without critics. The National Union of Students said the Greens had settled “for a few crumbs”, and their own Brisbane lord mayor candidate, Jonathan Sri, argued his federal colleagues had “given up [their] leverage without extracting enough concessions”.
Kristin O’Connell, a former Greens national secretary, warned the decision “will see a cohort of newly motivated Greens supporters become disillusioned because of how it was handled”.
The Greens housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather, fronted media on Monday and declined to answer whether he had been rolled by his party. He told reporters in Canberra he is “upset and angry” about the $4.9bn of rent rises projected over the next year and blamed Labor.
The government believes the Greens folded because a double dissolution in 2024 threatened to reduce their senator numbers from 12, particularly because of strong showings from the Legalise Cannabis party in recent elections. The Greens claim the threat was discussed but was not a primary driver of the decision.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said the party room was “broadly” on the same page throughout negotiations on the Haff and in the end “unanimously agreed” to the deal with a total of $3bn of direct spending.
Greens targets revealed
Before the bill had even passed, the Greens were threatening other government bills and drawing up a plan to take their campaign for rent caps or a freeze to the next election.
All signs are that although the Greens have lost the battle for rent caps, the war for the votes of the one in three Australians who rent is just beginning.
In a speech to the Victorian Greens conference on Sunday, Bandt will cite target seats including Macnamara, Higgins, Wills and Cooper in Melbourne; Tanya Plibersek’s seat of Sydney, where 52% of voters rent; and Richmond, in the northern rivers of New South Wales.
Chandler-Mather adds Moreton and Lilley in Brisbane, where the Greens were able to pick up three seats at the 2022 election.
Chandler-Mather has no intention of demobilising the campaign as he pursues the “transformation of the Greens into a full-blown not just renters’ party but also an organising party”.
He says the party is growing in the lower income brackets and “there are more renters voting for us than ever before”, which he labels “a natural evolution”.
Bandt makes no apology for the fact all the targets are held by Labor. “Our primary … electoral aim is to grow and to bring about real change for renters,” he says.
“Labor is choosing to be the country’s centre-right party … and we’re offering a genuine social democratic alternative.”
Polling evidence that the Greens are on the march is mixed. In the Newspoll they sit at a primary vote of 13%, which is about what they polled at and before the 2022 election. The Guardian Essential poll has them at 15%, which is higher than the 10% they recorded before the 2022 election.
A ‘tsunami’ is coming: pollster
The director of pollster RedBridge Group Australia, Kos Samaras, thinks the Greens are “going to win the war” for renters’ and young people’s votes.
“Those under 40 particularly those in their 20s have been looking for a third way in Australian politics. What previously prevented them from supporting the Greens is that they seemed to be a single issue party.
“Since the election the Greens have focused ruthlessly on housing and the economy in general.”
This appeals to zoomers and millennials who feel the economic system is “gamed against them”, he says.
RedBridge has the Greens’ primary vote at 13%, but higher in the 18 to 34 age bracket (28%), and particularly concentrated in parts of inner-city Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Its most recent poll even found the Greens outpolling Labor and the Coalition among that age group in Queensland.
“We won’t see the full impact for another couple of cycles, but with 450,000 to 500,000 young people enrolling every term a tsunami is coming,” Samaras says.
Although Labor points to studies that price controls have a harmful effect on supply and argues that rental law is up to the states, the Guardian Essential poll finds the Greens’ policies on rents are popular.
More than three quarters of voters believe rents should either be frozen (34%) or capped at the rate of inflation (44%). That dwarfs support for the solution national cabinet adopted of limiting increases to once a year (11%).
But still, Essential detected no significant changes in the Labor or Greens vote over the past six months among renters.
Chandler-Mather says although the Greens weren’t able to win a rent freeze or cap this time, by recruiting hundreds of organisers and volunteers the party now has a “platform upon which we build our fight”.
“Nine months ago, no, one even knew what a rent freeze was and now the majority of the country supports it,” he says.
“It’s been clear over these last nine months that you can mobilise people to act in their own material interests.”
While Chandler-Mather was building the campaign, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was using the bully pulpit of the prime ministership to counter-punch hard.
Albanese accused the Greens of “hypocrisy” at Labor’s conference for blocking the Haff while opposing housing developments. He targeted Chandler-Mather in question time quoting at length from an article the first term MP wrote for Jacobin arguing that “parliamentary conflict helps create the space for a broader campaign in civil society” and that passing the bill would “demobilise” the campaign.
Albanese said the essay “exposed” that for the Greens “it’s all about the campaign, not about the substance”.
But to Chandler-Mather the campaign had a real, material aim: to “fundamentally change the property relations in this country in favour of renters”. He insists the results speak for themselves.
“I do not think we would have won $3bn [in total] for public and community housing, if there weren’t hundreds of people across these country knocking on doors going to rallies and building this campaign.”
Rent caps only make it worse: Burns
One of the MPs in the Greens’ sights is Josh Burns, the member for Macnamara, an electorate where more than half (51.5%) of people rent, well above the Victorian and national average.
Burns says he is “not focused on the Greens’ megaphone diplomacy and trying to win political fights on social media”.
“I care about being part of a government that can get things done, including investing billions in social housing.
“People on our side want to build social housing because we believe in it – not to be reactionary to the Greens.”
Burns explains rent caps may “sound good” as a policy but “my nervousness with it is in two years there is less investment in the rental sector and the problem is made worse”. The policy could also drive more landlords towards “lucrative” short-stay leasing, such as Airbnb.
“Some people are genuinely facing financial hardship, that is real – and we’re doing a number of things to help those people.
“But in the long term if we have a supply issue, restricting investment in the rental sector is only going to make it worse.”
The housing minister, Julie Collins, used the passage of the Housing Australia Future Fund bill on Thursday to remind Australians of the total suite of Labor policies.
These include the $10bn fund that will spend at least $500m of its earnings to build 30,000 social and affordable homes; $3bn of direct spending on public, social and affordable housing; and a further $3bn to incentivise the states to build more houses.
In the May budget, Labor increased the maximum rate of commonwealth rent assistance by 15%.
“This has never been about the people in this place [parliament],” Collins said on Monday. “This is about people like [the ones] I’ve met who have been on social housing waiting lists for a long time.
“People like Lauree, [who’s] been homeless for more than a year on the north-west coast of Tasmania, who said getting a home means that she can now go back to school.”
On Wednesday, the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, boasted the Haff was “the single biggest investment in social housing” since Plibersek was housing minister over a decade ago.
Championing a cause
But Samaras warns that the Greens’ appeal is “not so much specific policies” like a rent cap as it is “championing [young voters’] cause”.
“Max Chandler-Mather is bang on about renters’ rights. When we ask voters who is strongest in fighting for housing, they say the Greens.
“On rent caps, they think they won’t necessarily fix the problem, they say the problem is too big or landlords will take it out on them.
“But they need a champion. They say ‘at least they [the Greens] are fighting for it’.”
Labor’s thinking is that the Greens struggle to balance the demands of their activist base and middle-of-the-road voters, who may respect them for bargaining hard but don’t want them to be blockers.
The Greens say they are willing to push again, and have already identified Labor’s help-to-buy shared equity scheme as another pinch point in parliament.
On Friday Bandt noted that Labor needs his party’s support for tax legislation as well, implying the petroleum resource rent tax changes could be another bargaining chip or flashpoint.
Will the Haff fight repeat next year over the help-to-buy scheme designed to help 10,000 homebuyers a year? Chandler-Mather says: “Well, I think that [is] the question for Labor … what we’ve proven is that we are willing to do that.”
“We don’t apologise for that. Our job in parliament isn’t to be Labor left, to roll over when you get your tummy tickled by the prime minister. Our job here is to fight for the people who often get locked out of politics.”
Whether that’s bluster in a week the Greens did precisely that or a statement of intent that will resonate with voters remains to be seen.
