The Greens say Labor has given up on renters and first home buyers by refusing to negotiate on the government’s housing bills, but have decided to wave the legislation through to focus on campaigning for renters and against Peter Dutton at the next election.
The Greens say renters should now vote Green to put them in balance of power in a minority Parliament if they want to end tax handouts for property investors and an end to unlimited rent increases.
As stated by Greens Leader Adam Bandt MP:
“There comes a point where you’ve pushed as far as you can. We tried hard to get Labor to shift on soaring rents and negative gearing, but we couldn’t get there this time.
“We’ll wave the housing bills through and take the fight to the next election, where we’ll keep Peter Dutton out and then push Labor to act on unlimited rent rises and tax handouts to wealthy property investors.”
As stated by Greens Housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather MP:
“The Greens are waving through Labor’s housing bills after accepting Labor doesn’t care enough about renters to actually do anything meaningful for them, and that is deeply, deeply disappointing.
“Last year the Greens secured $3 billion for social housing, six times what Labor originally planned to spend, and we hoped we could secure a similar outcome this time, but the tragedy is Labor decided they’d rather have a fight with the Greens than actually help people.
“We have pushed as hard as possible to get Labor to do more than tinkering around the edges of this devastating housing crisis in this term of parliament, but in the end we just couldn’t get Labor to care enough.
“We got close. Labor costed changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. We were inches away from the most significant changes to housing policy in a generation that would have helped hundreds of thousands of renters, but the Prime Minister blinked and that is deeply disappointing.
“It’s now over to the people of Australia at the next election. If you want to keep out Dutton, and push Labor to cap rent increases, phase out negative gearing and establish a public developer to build affordable homes, then vote Greens.”
