Minor party to weaponise housing crisis at March 2024 poll

The Greens will weaponise Brisbane’s rental crisis at March’s council elections by targeting wards that are home to the highest proportion of renters with candidates who are tenants.

Former Greens councillor turned Lord-Mayoral candidate Jonathan Sriranganathan says the minor party will target Brisbane City Council wards with high proportions of renters at the upcoming council elections in March 2024. Picture: Sarah Elks

The Greens will weaponise Brisbane’s rental crisis at March’s council elections by targeting wards that are home to the highest proportion of renters with candidates who are tenants.

In the wake of the federal Greens squeezing an extra $1bn for public and community housing out of Anthony Albanese in return for backing the government’s flagship $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund legislation, the minor party is ramping up its renters’ rights campaign in Brisbane ahead of next year’s local government election.

Lord mayoral candidate Jonathan Sriranganathan – the first Greens councillor elected in Brisbane in 2016 – said the party would target 11 of the city’s 26 seats, including six suburban wards with an increasing proportion of renters.

“The core message is a lot of people who used to be renting in the inner city and voting Greens have now been priced out to suburbs like Enoggera and Greenslopes; the Greens voting base is spreading across the city and people are switching to vote Greens for the first time,” Mr Sriranganathan said.

Brisbane has had a Liberal National Party mayor since 2004, and Labor’s fortunes have disintegrated in council over the past two decades.

Now the LNP holds 20 of 26 wards, Labor has five, and the Greens have a firm grip on Mr Sriranganathan’s former seat of the Gabba.

At the 2020 Brisbane City Council election, the Greens came second ahead of Labor in four LNP-won wards: Central, Coorparoo, Paddington and Walter Taylor. Since then, the minor party secured three Brisbane-based electorates at last year’s federal election.

Mr Sriranganathan said momentum was shifting towards the Greens, and the party would also target six more suburban wards including the LNP-held Enoggera, Holland Park, Northgate, Pullenvale and The Gap, and Labor’s Morningside.

The minor party is pitching policies such as a rate hike for properties being converted from long-term rentals to short-term Airbnb-style accommodation, rates incentives for landlords to keep a cap on rates, and vacancy taxes for investors leaving properties empty.

There’s also a proposal to shut down Brisbane’s Eagle Farm racecourse and transform 40ha of that site into 4000 publicly owned rent-capped apartments in five-storey buildings, as well as public green space.

Jonathan Sriranganathan, the Greens candidate for Mayor of Brisbane, speaks during a housing rally outside Labor's 49th National Conference in Brisbane last month. Picture: Dan Peled/NCA NewsWire

Mr Sriranganathan lives on a 40-year-old houseboat that he “free anchors” on the Brisbane River, equipped with solar power, rain water storage and a toilet-composting system.

After 10 years of renting in share houses, he said he got sick of being a tenant and having to move every 12 months as landlords hiked rates.

The Greens will run at least three tenant candidates – lawyer Quintessa Denniz in Enoggera, single mother Tiana Peneha in Northgate, and First Nations renter David Ford in Holland Park.

While the LNP and Labor are anticipating a tough fight with the Greens in some inner-city wards – major party sources say the minnow could pick up at least two more council seats – it would be an enormous task for Mr Sriranganathan to wrest the mayoralty from the LNP’s Adrian Schrinner.

The Real Estate Institute of Queensland has criticised rent control calls as a “shortsighted solution to a complex problem” that could “significantly deter property investment and reduce rental supply”.