The Greens will take negative gearing demands to housing talks with Labor

The Greens will threaten to block Labor’s controversial ‘Help to Buy’ housing scheme unless the federal government promises “significant changes” to negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts.

The Greens will threaten to block Labor’s controversial ‘Help to Buy’ housing scheme unless the federal government promises “significant changes” to negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts.

Labor needs the minor party to get its plan to support 40,000 first-home buyers by providing an equity stake in their house through the Senate, but the Greens remain unconvinced about the scale of the proposal and want greater tax changes to help more Australians.

Greens leader Adam Bandt said the system was stacked against renters and first home buyers, but Labor’s answer was a “housing lottery for a lucky few and higher rents and house prices for everyone else”.

“In negotiations with the government over the Help to Buy legislation we’ll push Labor to end the tax handouts for big property investors, freeze rents and build public housing to help renters and first home buyers,” he said.

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said the Help To Buy scheme would push up house prices for “99.8 per cent of renters and first home buyers,” making the market “even less affordable than it is now”.

Greens leader Adam Bandt will demand negative gearing changes in housing talks with Labor. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“Property prices and rents are growing way faster than wages, putting home ownership even further out of reach for millions of people, and we can’t fix this until the government stops handing out billions of dollars in tax concessions to big property investors,” he said.

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather Minister says Labor’s ‘Help to Buy’ scheme does not go far enough. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says negative gearing changes are not on the table. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Labor ministers have been careful to not explicitly rule out negative gearing changes, but on Sunday Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the issue was not on the government’s agenda.

“That’s not something that we’re proposing, not something that we are considering, not something that we are working up,” he told Sky News.

Mr Chalmers said the government had found a number of other ways to improve housing availability.

“We do have a huge challenge in our economy when it comes to vacancy rates, when it comes to rents, and that’s why we are investing billions and billions of dollars in new initiatives … to try and build more homes,” he said.

The Greens argue negative gearing changes will help more Australians buy their first home.

Coalition treasury spokesman Angus Taylor said the opposition would not support changes to negative gearing, claiming it would result in more competition in the housing market from industry super and international investment funds.

“The answer is we do have to have an alignment between housing supply and immigration,” he told the ABC.

“Taking away negative gearing isn’t the answer.”

Asked to directly rule out touching negative gearing ahead, Mr Taylor said the Coalition would announce “all our election policies before the election”.

“But we’re not proposing to go down those paths,” he said.

Mr Taylor said the Coalition had already recommitted to its 2022 policy allowing Australians to dip into their super to purchase their first home.

The super sector has condemned the opposition’s proposal, with Super Members Council Executive general manager of strategy Matt Linden saying demanding young Australians sacrifice their retirement income to buy a house was “not a solution”.

“It leads to higher house prices, higher mortgages and far less super for the individual when they retire, which in turn puts significant further pressure on the age pension,” he said.