Housing bill explained: what’s at the heart of the bitter standoff between Labor, Greens and Coalition?
A bitter standoff over housing between the Labor government and the Greens threatens to drag on all the way to the election, with each party accusing the other of holding up progress and ignoring ordinary Australians living through a housing and rental crisis.
At its heart is a political struggle to win over the potent voting bloc of those being squeezed by rising rents and mortgages – made all the more significant by the fact that the Greens explicitly brand themselves “the party of renters”.
What is Help To Buy?
It’s a shared equity scheme, where the government would support first home buyers with a smaller deposit into the property market. Up to 40,000 households – 10,000 annually for four years – would benefit from a government guarantee for large parts of the deposit.
The Greens want the government to do more on housing, including rent caps and winding back negative gearing, to win their support for this bill. The Coalition’s Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, called it “a bad policy” and said the government “shouldn’t be in the business of co-owning people’s homes”.
Labor countered that the Greens backed a shared equity scheme before the last election. “Why are they voting against their own policy?” Albanese asked on ABC radio on Wednesday.
What happened this week in parliament?
The government brought on a vote on its Help To Buy scheme in the Senate.
The Coalition, Greens and other senators responded by teaming up to defer the debate for two months. The government says the delay will hurt homebuyers and renters; the Greens say the bill wasn’t good enough, and want the government to offer more on housing support.
Why did the Senate defer the vote?
Deferring the vote meant opponents didn’t technically have to vote against it.
The Greens have again called for the government to reopen negotiations over the bill, holding out the prospect of supporting Help to Buy in future – if their conditions are met.
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi said: “The prime minister wants us all to get out of his way, but we are not getting out of his way to pass a bill that will make things much worse and will increase housing prices.”
The minor party has also withheld support on key legislation as it pushes the government for more progressive policies in recent negotiations on the Housing Australia Future Fund, and ongoing discussions about the environmental protection legislation and “nature positive” laws.
What are the players saying?
The ongoing public arguments between the two parties could be viewed as Labor and the Greens seeking to win support from renters and first home buyers by criticising the policies of their opponent.
“I’m calling the Greens political party out,” the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, tweeted; the housing minister, Clare O’Neil, accused the Greens of “holding this legislation hostage to generate more media”.
The Greens’ housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather, said: “Millions of renters need help now … Labor offers nothing but a bill that will drive up house prices.”
Bandt, asked about Labor criticism on Wednesday, claimed his supporters strongly backed the Greens’ stance.
“I’m getting nothing but good feedback from people who are saying, ‘yes, keep pushing Labor to take the housing and rental crisis seriously’,” he said.
“What people are telling me is ‘keep fighting for renters, keep fighting for first home buyers, and keep fighting for stressed mortgage holders’.”
What happens now?
The bill is scheduled to be considered again in November. Albanese said on Wednesday that Labor would seek to reintroduce the bill, after it had been deferred – the first step, in a procedural sense, towards a double dissolution election that he referred to on Tuesday.
