close
close

topicnews · September 17, 2024

‘Stop pushing, start negotiating’: Senate teams up to delay Labor housing bill

‘Stop pushing, start negotiating’: Senate teams up to delay Labor housing bill

Listen to Australian and international news and follow trending topics with
Finger-pointing, heated debates and unusual alliances have thwarted the administration’s plans to bring its housing finance bill to a vote in the Senate.
Labor senators such as Foreign Minister Penny Wong blamed the opposition and other senators for delaying progress in solving Australia’s housing crisis.
“Well, Senator Ghosh, there are many obstacles. Those are the obstacles. You may not like us pointing them out, but you have a responsibility because you are working with the Australian Greens to stop a proposal that would enable more Australians to own their own homes. I mean, this is an unholy alliance between the Greens and the Coalition. We know there is a housing shortage in this country. We need more homes. We need more homes, faster, in more parts of the country. The other side doesn’t want that. They seem to think that home ownership should be the preserve of only a few, and the Australian Greens seem to want to enable Mr Dutton and give him the power to stop there being more homes in this country.”
While the Greens and the Coalition joined forces to delay Labor’s home ownership bills again, Labor’s plans to bring forward a vote failed after it threatened a joint dissolution of the party.
The Prime Minister says neither the Greens nor the coalition have any real reasons to vote against the bills.
“We have legislation. We support it. Nobody puts forward a reasonable argument why they shouldn’t vote for it. In some cases it’s just immaturity and spitefulness from the Greens spokesperson who says he supports more housing but will never vote for it, and in the case of the Liberals and Nationals they are just blockers. They have never been particularly good on housing, as the Housing Minister has just pointed out, Minister O’Neil, they didn’t have a Housing Minister for much of their time in government.”
For the second time, the Labour Party has failed to get its Help to Buy Bill passed, which would offer buyers of their first home cheaper deposits through a government guarantee.
If the government fails to get the bill passed by the Senate in another vote within at least three months, a double dissolution of parliament can be requested.
Given the apparent lack of support for passing the bill, many questioned why the government was even putting it to a vote. There was speculation that the issue could be used to bring about a double dissolution of Parliament.
A step that Mr Albanese had not ruled out before the vote.
“Well, let’s wait and see. We’re going… it’s up to them. I’ll tell you how we can avoid a double dissolution. It’s up to the coalition and the Greens to vote for laws that they support.”
In the run-up to the vote, there was sharp criticism of the Labor Party from both sides of the Senate.
Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham described Labor’s attempts to advance the bills as a failure in both cases.
“The Albanese government can’t even implement a strategy to defeat one of its own bills. It certainly can’t get its own bill passed, but now it even manages to find a strategy or a means to defeat its own bill. The Labor government has so lost control of the way its legislative agenda works that it has only been able to persuade a single non-Labor senator to vote with it.”
And Green Senator Mehreen Faruqi believes the proposed legislation is simply not good for most tenants.
“You don’t have the numbers for anything. You don’t have the numbers for anything because this Senate has decided that your bill will actually make things worse for 99.8 percent of the five and a half million renters that live in this country. So you come here and try to impose the will of the Senate. You know, as we said yesterday, the Prime Minister wants us to get out of his way, but we’re not going to get out of his way to pass a bill that’s going to make things a lot worse and increase property prices.”
The Help to Buy scheme would support 40,000 eligible buyers with an equity contribution of up to 40 percent on new homes and 30 percent on existing homes.
Labour’s other housing bill, the Build to Rent Bill, is also being considered in the Senate.
The Build-to-Rent program is intended to provide developers with incentives to build exclusively rental apartments through tax relief.
At least 10 percent of the apartments must be social housing, with the price being about 25 percent below the market price.
The Greens are demanding that 100 percent of the housing stock be built to be affordable and that rent increases be limited to two percent every two years. However, this would affect the financial viability of property developers.
Green Party leader Adam Bandt said the government was leaving no room for maneuver in the negotiations.
“The Prime Minister must stop pressuring and negotiate with the Greens to solve the housing and rent crisis. This means capping and freezing rents, limiting tax breaks to wealthy property investors that deny renters the chance to buy their first home, and building more social housing. It is simply unbelievable that the Prime Minister would rather see this bill fail than negotiate a result.”
He also says that the fact that Mr Albanese is prepared to threaten a double dissolution is a betrayal of the people.
“Do you know who the losers will be in this? The losers will be the millions of renters and stressed out mortgage holders who are relying on Parliament to solve the housing and rent crisis because people are on the brink of collapse. Instead, the Prime Minister is threatening early elections and making political gestures. Well, no, Prime Minister. Stop pushing and start negotiating.”

With the vote now postponed, the future of the bill and Australia’s housing crisis remains uncertain as both sides of the aisle appear reluctant to give in.

You may also like...