The Coalition and Greens collaborated in the Senate to postpone the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund until October, which has led to fears of a double dissolution election. As a result, the bill will not pass this week.
Due to the deadlock, the Greens were accused of “hurting people” by the crossbench, and Labor’s Dan Farrell referred to the Greens and Coalition as “the axis of evil.”
Around midday on Monday, a Green’s resolution to table the bill until October 16 to “give the national cabinet time to progress reforms to strengthen renters’ rights” passed 37 votes to 23. Tuesday’s measure vote was not held, despite Labor’s attempt.
This is true despite Farrell’s warning that the government would view the delay as a “failure to pass” the law and prime minister Anthony Albanese’s Saturday offer of an additional $2 billion in direct expenditure on social and affordable housing.
A double dissolution election would allow the government the option of calling Australians back to the polls following a second unsuccessful effort to pass a law if such a failure occurred.
The Greens “would like for us to postpone that bill until the prime minister can show what he is going to do to relieve real pressure on one-third of Australian households” who rent, said Hanson-Young.
She said that Labor had discovered “a little bit of cash stashed down the back of the couch” and had promised $2 billion over the weekend after “months of being told there was nothing the government could do.”
The “axis of evil” was described by the Green Party and the Coalition by Farrell, the deputy leader of Labor in the Senate.
“Every day of delay is more than $1.3m that does not go to housing for people who need it,” the housing minister Julie Collins said.
At a conference, the Greens’ leader, Adam Bandt, and their spokesperson on housing, Max Chandler-Mather, were scheduled to discuss the party’s position.
In a statement, Bandt stated that “unlimited rent increases should be illegal”.
“The prime minister and the Labor premiers are under pressure to implement a rent freeze and cap rent rises.
“This is a Labor test. On the mainland, Labor is in power nonstop. Therefore, rent increases are their responsibility.
Chandler-Mather urged Greens supporters to “hold the line” and claimed that “pressure works” in achieving results for tenants.
Albanese claimed that a rent freeze would “destroy supply” during question time, calling the Greens and Coalition an “unholy alliance”.
“[The Greens] deal in protests; we deal in progress,” he declared. “They see problems to campaign on, whereas we see difficulties to overcome. We want to create more homes; they want to build their profiles.
The proposed legislation establishes a $10 billion future fund with a minimum $500 million annual payout requirement for investments in social and affordable housing.
The government was forced to make compromises after Chandler-Mather spent months criticizing the future fund model as a sort of “gambling” and demanding that the government guarantee the $500 million annual payment as a minimum rather than a maximum and the $2 billion in direct investment.
The Albanese government requested in April that the national cabinet and housing ministers look into tenants’ rights, which the Greens hope will lead to a rent freeze or a rent cap akin to that in the Australian Capital Territory.
But Labor has so far rejected the Greens’ demands to create a fund of at least $1 billion to encourage states and territories to implement a two-year rent freeze.
The motion states: “That further consideration of the bill and two related bills be made an order of the day for October 16 in order to give national cabinet time to progress reforms to strengthen renters’ rights as advised in the prime minister’s press release of April 28, 2023, including reforms to limit rent increases.”
The top housing organizations in the nation demanded that the fund be passed this week and that the standoff in the issue be broken. Senators David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie joined that call and declared their support for the legislation.
The Green Party, according to cross-bencher senator Tammy Tyrrell, is not representing their electorate by continuing to reject the bill.
You’re doing them harm. You’re preventing them from getting a house in the future; she told the press.
“I believe that’s a bad thing since they are the ones holding all of these folks hostage.
“At the end of the day, you’re hurting people.”
