Housing fund bill ‘not fit for purpose’, says crossbench

Greens and key crossbenchers have declared they will oppose the government’s signature $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund in its current form.

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather says it was clear the government had ‘no support’ for its housing plan. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Greens and key crossbenchers have declared they will oppose the government’s signature $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund in its current form, which they say has “no support” and is not “fit for purpose”.

The final report of the Senate inquiry into the HAFF – which the government was relying on to drive forward negotiations with the crossbench – laid bare concerns from the Greens, David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe who were unified in their view the legislation was unambitious and risked making the housing crisis worse.

It comes as new analysis from Australia’s biggest lender shows housing affordability in the nation’s two biggest cities is the worst on record as a result of the surging interest rates.

The average would-be homeowner hoping to break into the Sydney property market faces committing more than 40 per cent of their disposable income to service the debt on a median-priced home, the Commonwealth Bank research shows – well above the previous peak of just over 30 per cent in 2008.

Pumping an additional $10bn capital injection into the HAFF, lifting the $500m annual cap on the construction of affordable housing and quarantining a portion of the 30,000 homes for Indigenous Australians are among the dozens of recommendations.

In its dissenting report to the Senate inquiry, the Greens said the government’s claim the bill would deliver a major investment in public and affordable housing was “deeply misleading”.

“The HAFF is deeply unambitious and does not provide certainty in housing investment. Despite being the centrepiece legislation to tackle the escalating housing crisis in Australia, the government’s plan would ultimately see the housing crisis get worse, not better,” the dissenting report states. “If (Labor) chooses to ignore these concerns, it is clear the bill in its current form is not fit for purpose.”

The Greens demanded the funding should be used to “invest directly in social and affordable housing”, rather than put into a ­future fund, and for the government to implement “concrete measures” for renters such as doubling the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance and instituting nationwide rent controls.

Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said it was clear the government had “no support” for its housing plan, and slammed Labor’s refusal to invest $5bn a year for public housing while ticking-off on the $368bn AUKUS submarine deal as being “morally repugnant”.

“With almost the entire Senate crossbench and everyone from the CFMEU to Anglicare and Master Builders all calling on the government to invest more in social and affordable housing, it’s time the government came to the table and stopped standing in the way of progress,” he told The Australian.

Housing Minister Julie Collins pushed back against calls to increase the capital investment in the fund, saying that “at every stage we have invested more”.

“We have invested the $575m in our first budget … we’re now negotiating a new housing and homelessness agreement which is at least $1.6bn from the federal government … every year and the states and territories working ­together,” she told the ABC. “Under the Housing Accord we’re talking about another 10,000 affordable homes, matched by the states and territories again.”

Senator Pocock said the capital investment needed to be increased to $20bn to “arrest the net decline” in social housing supply and for a portion of the social and affording housing to be quarantined for Indigenous Australians.