Opinion: Double dissolution election would mean referendum on housing

It could turn out to be very helpful if the Prime Minister opts for a double dissolution election - it would effectively mean we get a referendum on housing, writes Robert Schwarten.

It could turn out to be very helpful if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese opts for a double dissolution election, if the Greens continue to block his plans for a $10bn housing affordability fund.

The resulting early election would effectively be a referendum on housing policy and delivery – and the associated debate and focus on housing policy might just yield some very outward-looking initiatives. Currently it’s all a hodgepodge of blurred lines between governments.

Voters would also have the chance to square up those in the Greens and LNP who have created this impasse. Now, the Greens and LNP tub-thumping on housing is their business – it’s up to them how they play politics, and after all they cannot be blamed for indulging in politics as that is, after all, what they do. But forcing an election on the issue would mean the wreckers would have to explain why everyone was starving while they held the key to the larder. At least Labor is trying to do something about the crisis.

The big question here is to what end are the Greens and LNP hoping for? Do Australians really want the non-government side of politics to keep the Treasury till shut on housing funds? I doubt it.

The Menzies credit squeeze came when I was just a boy in the early 1960s. I saw at the time how my builder dad struggled to get work and how he tried to make ends meet. I saw up close the real-world impact of the fragility of the economy, and the fundamental cog that housing is in the whirring machine of government. Later in life I became the longest-serving housing minister in the nation’s history. I get it.

The Coalition wears a large badge of dishonour when it comes to the current crisis situation – a downhill race towards probably the worst outbreak of homelessness since the end of the Second World War.

(The war effort had meant virtually no housing was built for five years. Returned soldiers – many of whom had children they’d never met to wives whom they’d married while on leave – returned home to live in tents. There were, for example, more than 5000 people living in the Carina area in such circumstances. Many suburbs of Brisbane looked like that.)

Even the most caste-hardened Liberal cannot deny the fact that recent federal Coalition governments have ignored housing. Former PM John Howard even famously once declared: “Housing is a matter for the states.”

Meanwhile, I can’t work out why the Greens have sided with this lot – other than the fact that when it comes to actually doing the work of government they are the ultimate frauds.

For example, they opposed the carbon reduction plan by Kevin Rudd – thus churning out more carbon – simply because they said the proposal did not go far enough. Now that’s a bit like saying the blood-alcohol level of drivers should be zero and so I’ll oppose any limits other than that – and in the meantime just drink as much as you like before you drive. It’s nonsensical.

The reason a double dissolution provision exists is for precisely the reason we are witnessing . Dog in the manger senators who have the luxury of long terms and no constituency need to be collared sometimes.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There’s $10bn for housing on the table here. The Prime Minister has already tried to negotiate, and has added an extra $2bn from the original plan, and other concessions.

Purists might argue there are flaws in delivery, but that’s about as relevant as the Middle Ages argument regarding how many fairies could fit on the head of a pin.

The rent-freeze Greens huffing and puffing is just another three-card trick. Rent freezes will not lead to on more person being housed – and in fact could have the opposite effect.

The cruelty is that the Greens brazenly say they exploit electorates of high-density renters to sell their snake oil. The reality is that the only way to deliver relief to renters is more housing stock. It’s not as simple as taking the long handle to investors.

Despite the potential benefits I can see of an election-fuelled debate on housing, nobody is doing cartwheels at the thought of lining up at a polling booth again. But that is one of only three choices here.

The second is for the Greens and the federal opposition to free up the funds they already agreed to in the Budget and put the biggest cash injection since those post-War days into actually building homes and training construction workers.

That is surely the choice every decent fair-minded Australian would go with, because the third one is to spend up big buying more tents, swags and cardboard boxes for the homeless.

Robert Schwarten was a Beattie Government Housing Minister

Originally published as Opinion: Double dissolution election would mean referendum on housing