Greens take aim at property investors in housing policy fight

The Greens are demanding the government crack down on $39bn in tax breaks for property investors.

Anthony Albanese in question time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Beach

The Greens have escalated their political conflict with Labor amid the threat of a double dissolution election over affordable housing and are demanding the government crack down on $39bn in tax breaks for property investors.

The housing policy showdown comes as the minor party threatens to sink Labor’s planned strengthening of the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT) in the senate unless the $2.4bn in extra revenue from the measure can be doubled.

The Greens also condemned as “paltry” the passage of Labor’s promised cost-of-living support, including a $40 base rate increase to JobSeeker and other payments which will flow from September 20. Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said that, after indexation changes, a JobSeeker recipient with no dependants would receive an increase of $56 a fortnight.

Setting up a potential double dissolution trigger on Wednesday, Housing Minister Julie Collins reintroduced legislation to establish Labor’s $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) which would provide $500m each year to be spent on social and affordable housing.

Ms Collins said the government wanted opponents of the legislation “to stand with us now to deliver that safety and security a home provides.”

But Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said that “if Labor spent as much on public housing as they are on tax breaks for property investors, Australia could build over 100,000 public homes a year and tackle the housing crisis within a decade.”

Parliamentary Budget Office modelling commissioned by the minor party suggests that property tax deductions and the capital gains tax discount for investment properties are set to cost the federal budget $38.9bn in forgone revenue in 2023-24.

Over the decade, the PBO forecast that forgone revenue from these measures would amount to about $60bn.

Mr Chandler-Mather argued that Labor was “willing to lock in half a trillion dollars worth of tax concessions for property investors, give renters nothing, and only $500m … for social housing.”

To pass the HAFF, the Greens want Labor to invest up to $2.5bn dollars each year in affordable housing and provide a further $1bn to entice states and territories into implementing a two-year freeze on rental increases.

But Anthony Albanese told ABC radio on Wednesday that “the Greens talk about figures and money like it’s monopoly.”

Speaking in parliament, the Prime Minister accused the minor party of embracing a “we want more, therefore we will have nothing” attitude to legislation.