Homeless used as political fodder

A $10 billion plan to build 30,000 social housing homes has been blocked by the Greens. And the people impacted have hit out.

COMMENT

Cold sharpens the mind. When you’re freezing in the night and every thought is directed to the need to get warm it makes you focus.

As I write this I’m doing the Vinnies CEO Sleepout, which is an effort to give the most privileged people an insight into what the most underprivileged go through every day.

There are hundreds of people voluntarily freezing across the country on this night. There are thousands more who are freezing because they have no choice.

A homeless man begs for money during the launch of the Vinnies CEO Sleepout 2023 in Martin Place, Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Simon Bullard.

And I’m pretty sure that none of them are the Greens MPs who have blocked a $10 billion social housing fund for 30,000 homes because if they were I don’t think they’d survive the night. And it wouldn’t be the cold that got them.

The survivors of homelessness and charity workers I have spoken to tonight are oscillating between fury and disbelief that a party that claims to be progressive, that claims to care about the disadvantaged, would be using the homeless as political fodder in their ideological war against the Labor government.

This would seem an outrageous claim had the Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather – why do they all have hyphenated surnames? – not admitted as much in a piece he wrote for the socialist magazine Jacobin.

Apart from the usual commie ranting about “neoliberalism” and an apparent objection to the fact that the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) will invest in the sharemarket – Ew! Capitalism! – Chandler-Mather belled the cat when he essentially said the Greens were trying to make people suffer so much they exploded with revolutionary zeal.

Max Chandler-Mather during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra this month. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“Consequently, if the Greens were to wave through the HAFF bill, it would foreclose on the possibility of building the social and political pressure needed to force the government to take meaningful action… Allowing the HAFF to pass would demobilise the growing section of civil society that is justifiably angry about the degree of poverty and financial stress that exists in such a wealthy country.”

So there you have it. The Greens are forcing the homeless to wait longer for public housing because they are trying to raise an angry mob to either tear down the neoliberal capitalist hegemony or at least vote for the soulless watermelons at the next election.

Balmain boy Keith Russell travelled the world as a ships boy and merchant seaman back when Balmain was a working class port suburb. He became homeless at 61 when his marriage broke down.

‘We need houses yesterday, not in 18 months.’ Picture: supplied

Thanks to Vinnies he was able to get a housing place and he is simply incredulous that a supposedly left-wing party is blocking the chance for more.

“I watched parliament today on the television and the Greens are arguing with the Labor Party about the housing crisis,” he told news.com.au, shaking his head.

“We need houses yesterday, not in 18 months.”

And this is what makes the Greens’ fake take that they are merely delaying the legislation rather than blocking it even more cruelly cynical. Forcing those on the street to wait a day more than they need to when relief is at hand just to punish the government is ideological sadism.

It’s a block and Keith knows it’s a block.

“They shouldn’t be blocking it,” he said. “Get the houses out then start negotiating for more. But nothing should be blocked, especially this. This is of paramount importance.”

And if it’s a block that means Labor can use it as a trigger to call a double-dissolution election, at which it would almost certainly strengthen its position, given current polling numbers.

Forcing those on the street to wait a day more than they need to when relief is at hand just to punish the government is ideological sadism. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Meanwhile the Greens are trying to exploit genuine pain among renters by claiming they could just force landlords to cut rents – just like they want to just force the RBA to cut rates – with no thought of the potential economic carnage this could trigger.

If people don’t think they can get adequate returns on investment properties they will sink their money elsewhere and this could have a catastrophic effect on housing supply, which is the key to rental relief.

Likewise whenever there is a new housing or high-rise development in a Greens electorate you can bet your bippy that the Balmain basket weavers will be chaining themselves to the nearest tree.

But these commie chumps just love a command economy, which is why they think the answer to interest rate pain is to force the RBA to do what the government tells it. Worked well for the Soviet Union.

Because the truth is these one-eyed fanatics don’t like poor people, they just hate capitalism. They can’t even understand how a Future Fund works – Chandler-Mather got confused because one year it lost money – much less the notion of sustainable spending.

They are extremist revolutionaries who understand nothing more complex than Marxist academic cliches and like the Bolsheviks they are more than happy to break people in order to achieve ideological purity.

Meanwhile as the Greens pontificate and play politics and await their glorious revolution the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the country continue to suffer. Which is every revolutionary’s dream.

If you would like to help fight homelessness please donate to Joe’s Vinnies fundraiser site and he will match all donations dollar for dollar.

Originally published as Homeless used as political fodder