Your home will be worth less with us: Greens

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather says a plan to address the housing crisis could involve overseeing real declines in the value of the family home.

The Greens' housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather.

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather has made clear the minor party’s policies are aimed at achieving a real decline in housing values over time to ­ensure the next generation has a better chance of buying a home

Mr Chandler-Mather said that Labor had failed to comprehend that “the social contract has been broken”, and that an “entire generation of people who previously, I think, probably would have got involved in the Labor Party have abandoned them”.

He said that a hard working, well educated young Australian with a good job could now be “earning a $100,000-plus a year wage” and it was “still impossible for you to buy a home”.

The Greens have proposed a major overhaul to phase out negative gearing and abolish the ­capital gains tax discount, as well as the establishment of a government-owned property developer to rent and sell at below-market prices.

The party has also advocated for a rent freeze and cap on rents, arguing that 20 per cent of renters across the nation vote Green.

In an interview with The Australian as part of a series exploring the Greens’ policy platform, Mr Chandler-Mather said the party’s key objective was to halt housing price growth.

“I think our goal, our stated goal, is to stop house price growth, so zero per cent growth, to give wages a chance to catch up,” he said. “I think the net effect would be a stabilisation of house prices.

Green Extremes

Makarrata ‘can put Australia Day row to rest’

The Greens have accused Labor of abandoning the truth and treaty process after the referendum defeat, but argue a Makarrata commission could help resolve the Australia Day debate.

Your home will be worth less with us: Greens

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather says a plan to address the housing crisis could involve overseeing real declines in the value of the family home.

Jewish community in fear after Greens Mayor’s anti-Israel rant

One of Sydney’s biggest councils will ramp-up security at its next meeting after its Greens mayor accused Israel and its supporters of ‘murdering babies’ in an ‘inflammatory’ speech.

Bandt plan to usurp ALP on left

Adam Bandt says the Greens have replaced Labor as the authentic party of the centre-left and will win over voters by taking a ‘Robin Hood platform to the election’.

Greens’ war on our closest ally

The Greens have attacked the US alliance, claiming it increases the risk of conflict, undermines Australian sovereignty and compromises stable relations with Beijing.

Ambitious Greens must be more than a party of protest

Adam Bandt has clarified the existential challenge to Labor by revealing the Greens’ long-term political objective – to become the genuine party of Australia’s political left.

Extreme Greens call to kneecap the RBA

The Greens have demanded Labor intervene in monetary policy and overturn an August rate hike, triggering warnings the minor party would end of the era of Reserve Bank independence.

Forget Hamas, glass-jaw Green declares war on satire: ‘Cartoon will cost me votes’

Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi has threatened to sue The Australian for defamation and demanded an apology over a Johannes Leak cartoon.

Greens’ plan would hurt those the party is seeking to help

Nick McKim’s call for Labor to overturn a future RBA rate hike reveals the Greens as a party of grandstanders, keen to win over disaffected voters on radical policies that can never be implemented.

“The alternative is this continued Ponzi scheme of the government flooding the housing market with cash to investors in the form of tax handouts, encouraging banks and property developers and investors to participate in this mad, highly financialised housing market. That works for investors and developers and banks. It does not work for homeowners or for people trying to enter the housing market.”

Mr Chandler-Mather pointed to the United States, with its “overly financialised and leveraged housing market”, saying that “for homeowners it’s a dangerous ­situation where, if it becomes too over leveraged, the whole thing could collapse like we saw in the United States”.

“In the short to medium term, a combination of phasing out tax handouts for investors, rent caps and government-built affordable homes is the solution to the housing crisis,” he said. “Even if house prices stopped growing entirely, at current wage growth it would take 21 years for wages and house prices to get back to 1980s levels of affordability.”

He said the Greens would release more details soon about their proposal for a government-owned property developer to try to build 360,000 homes over five years and more than 600,000 over the decade. Apartments would be open to a range of people because “if only people on welfare benefits can live in there, then you get the concentration of social disadvantage. You get a lot of the social problems that comes with. If you have a cleaner living next door to a university professor living next door to someone on the pension living next door to someone who just works at the local Woolies, then you get really diverse and robust communities.”

While people from all backgrounds would be able to buy apartments, including those on high incomes, they could “only sell it back to the (government-owned) developer for the purchase price, plus indexation”.

The Greens say that, based on analysis conducted by the Parliamentary Budget Office, an average renter would save $5200 a year on rent – a 19 per cent discount. The average first-home buyer would save $260,000 – a 33 per cent discount compared to average market prices. “The impact on the underlying cash balance for this plan as costed by the PBO is $27.9bn over 10 years,” Mr Chandler-Mather said. “Now, in one year, the government on rental deductions for property investors as outlined in their budget papers is something like $30bn a year. So $27.9bn over 10 years … is actually relatively modest.”