Election 2025: Negative gearing central to Greens power sharing

Adam Bandt will also demand a blanket freeze on rent increases in ­return for the Greens’ support in a hung parliament during a National Press Club speech on Wednesday.

Greens leader Adam Bandt: ‘If we don’t stop the bastards, house prices will get further and further out of reach.’ Picture: NewsWire / Tertius Pickard

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Adam Bandt will issue an election ransom note to Anthony Albanese demanding capital gains and negative gearing tax breaks be axed and that a blanket freeze on rent increases be imposed in ­return for the Greens’ support in a hung parliament.

Mr Bandt on Wednesday will put housing at the heart of the Greens’ minority government ­demands in a National Press Club election pitch to “seven million renters” who he says will have a voice in parliament if they vote for the far-left party.

The Greens leader will use ­Donald Trump and global financial uncertainty to claim that millions of Australians will be kept out of homes because “wealthy investors spooked by Trump (will) leave stocks and shares and pile into property, pushing house prices into the stratosphere”.

“This reform has always been urgent, but the threat of a Trump-fuelled attack on Australian renters and first-home buyers in the next few months now makes this a matter of housing life and death,” he will say.

With the polls indicating a close election that could result in a minority Labor government, the Greens will pressure Mr Albanese to “grandfather” and limit negative gearing and the 50 per cent CGT discount to one investment property, which Mr Bandt claims will protect current “mum-and-dad” investors.

Under the proposal, people would be able to keep existing negative gearing and CGT discount benefits for a sole investment property purchased before the policy commences.

However, anyone who buys or inherits an investment property after the new rules begin will be banned from negative gearing and CGT discounts.

“Imagine being a renter armed with your life savings rocking up to an auction knowing that the wealthy property investor next to you gets a big fat cheque from ­Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton, schemes that these politicians themselves have benefited from, that lets them bid the price up and out of reach for first-home buyers. How fair is that?” he will say. He will also demand that Mr Albanese freeze rents reflecting rates as of January 1, 2023. A two-year freeze would be imposed from when the Greens’ bill is legislated, with increases capped at 2 per cent every two years.

Analysis by the Parliamentary Library, commissioned by the Greens, estimates that changes to negative gearing and CGT concessions could lead to more than 850,000 people living in their own home, bringing the percentage of owner-occupied dwellings from less than 69 per cent to more than 72 per cent.

The same data revealed the average rent paid per week went from $417 to $488 between 2022 and 2024, or from $459 to $544 for those renting in NSW. The PBO predicts that the average renter household would have paid an $6318 less since August 2022 had there been a rental freeze in place, saving a total of $13.8bn across the country.

Mr Bandt will on Wednesday argue “unlimited rent increases should be illegal”. “Landlords cannot be allowed to raise rents by whatever number they want. There has to be limits,” he will say.

“Rents don’t fall when mortgage rates fall. Labor claims they can’t do it, but they got the states and territories together to cap and regulate power prices, and they can do it with rents as well.”

He will claim that at the May 3 election, “those getting locked out – Gen Zs and Millennials – will be the biggest voting bloc”.

“With a minority government coming, the third of the country who rents and who are locked out of owning a home will finally get a seat at the table even if they can’t afford a roof over their head.”

Analysis by The Australian shows four of the five seats with the greatest portion of rented dwellings are either held or being targeted by the Greens. They include Mr Bandt’s seat of Melbourne, which has the second highest portion of rented dwellings in the country at nearly 47 per cent. More than 50 per cent of dwellings are rentals in Tanya Plibersek’s seat of Sydney, while the Greens-held Queensland seats of Brisbane and Griffith had a rate of nearly 46 per cent and 42 per cent respectively.

Mr Bandt’s will also seek to open fresh divisions in Labor over its $33bn Homes for Australia plan, which he described as being underpinned by Band-Aid solutions “tinkering around the edges” of the housing crisis.

The Greens leader, who is fending off cashed-up attacks by conservative activist group Advance and challenges from the Liberal Party and Labor in the party’s four lower house seats including Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith, will use the speech to claim his party is “fighting for renters and first home buyers”.

“If we don’t stop the bastards, house prices will get further and further out of reach,” he will say. “Rents will continue to keep rising. There will be fewer and fewer genuinely affordable places to live. Over the next 10 years, there’s $176bn going in tax handouts to property investors. Albanese and Dutton give more help to someone who owns five homes to buy their sixth than to a renter trying to buy their first.”

The vow to force Labor into enacting housing reform follows Mr Bandt declaring he would also demand the party put dental onto Medicare at a cost of more than $16bn a year, to be paid for by a Greens’ Robin Hood-style tax that would introduce a 40 per cent levy on profits earned by corporations with an annual turnover of more than $100m.

The showdown between the Greens and Labor over housing comes amid internal Albanese government pressure led by backbenchers and some ministers who are keen to revive a watered-down version of Bill Shorten’s disastrous 2019 negative gearing and CGT policies.

Despite the Prime Minister’s public resistance to reheating Mr Shorten’s housing tax crackdown, Jim Chalmers last year confirmed he asked Treasury to model the impact of changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions.

Mr Albanese was also recently quizzed on whether he would negatively gear his luxury $4.3m clifftop Copacabana property on the NSW Central Coast, which was listed in November to rent for $1500 per week.

The Labor leader has faced ongoing pressure on how he would negotiate with the Greens should he find himself in a hung parliament, and last week committed his first gaffe while seeking to distance himself from the minor party, declaring he would not “rule out” working with the Greens when he meant to say he would never negotiate with them.