Yahoo News Greens agree to support Labor’s $10bn housing fund, breaking months-long impasse
The Greens have agreed to support the Albanese government’s $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund (Haff) bill, guaranteeing it will pass the Senate after months of bitter negotiations.
On Monday the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, and housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather, said the minor party would support the bill after securing a further $1bn for public and community housing but nothing additional for renters.
Chandler-Mather said the party had been “pragmatic” and understood “we’re not going to solve the entire housing crisis in one bill”.
In question time, the housing minister, Julie Collins, described the bill as the “single biggest investment from the federal government in more than a decade in social and affordable housing”.
The bill, which Albanese had suggested could be a trigger for a double dissolution, was due to be debated again in the October sitting weeks. Collins confirmed the government will now pass the bill this week with support from the Greens, the Jacqui Lambie Network and David Pocock.
In June the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced a further $2bn for social and affordable housing, but the Greens withheld their support and continued to delay the bill with Coalition support while demanding a freeze on rents.
Bandt told reporters in Canberra now that $3bn was being spent on public, social and affordable housing “that is not dependent on a gamble in the stock market”, the minor party had agreed to support the bill.
“The Greens were not able to get the government to shift on rent caps or rent freezes,” he said.
Chandler-Mather, who in June wrote in Jacobin that allowing the bill to pass “would demobilize [sic] the growing section of civil society” angry about poverty,denied vowing to sink the bill if Labor refused to freeze rents.
“We said we would negotiate in good faith,” he said. “We wanted extra funding for public and community housing and wanted action for renters.
“We secured [that] funding and now we turn our attention to fighting for a freeze on rent increases,” he said, citing “future legislation” on housing as a further point of leverage over Labor.
Related: Rental vacancy rate plummets to record low as Australia’s housing crisis deepens
In question time Albanese said he was pleased the Haff bill “now has majority support in the Senate”.
Albanese thanked Bandt “for the constructive discussions that we have had” and accused the Coalition of being of “great irrelevancy in Australian politics” for having opposed the bill.
The $10bn future fund is designed to build 30,000 more social and affordable homes. It has been strengthened after months of negotiation, including by Labor promising to legislate to ensure the fund will spend at least $500m of its earnings every year.
In August the national cabinet agreed to limit rent increases to once a year, but Chandler-Mather continued to warn that Labor was failing renters and allowing increases of unlimited size.
Chandler-Mather said that over the next 12 months there will be an estimated $4.9bn of rent increases “and that’s now the Labor Party’s fault”.
“They had the power at national cabinet to freeze and cap rent increases, and they refused,” he said.
Federal Labor refused to cap rent increases, citing studies that such a measure would be harmful for housing supply and opposition from state and territory leaders.
The shadow housing minister, Michael Sukkar, accused Labor of a “desperate” deal, arguing the fact it allocated $1bn to “the Coalition’s highly successful National Housing Infrastructure Facility just reiterates again that investments of this kind should be made directly, not through Labor’s convoluted Haff money-go-round”.
But industry stakeholders including the Master Builders Association, Property Council and community housing groups applauded the agreement.
Wendy Hayhurst, the chief executive of Community Housing Industry Association, said passage of the laws was “critically important”.
“This is the first step to easing the housing crisis and expanding the right type of housing supply, so that people on low and modest incomes have genuine housing options,” she said.
Scott Langford, the chief executive of community housing provider SGCH, praised the “agreement that will unlock the capital to create more homes for those who need them”.
“This is the culmination of expert advice from a broad collection of housing experts and peak bodies. Progressive legislation such as this is game changing.”
Collins told reporters the bill was not about politics, it is about “people on the ground”. “This is about people like I’ve met on social housing waiting lists for a long time. People like Lori, who has been homeless for more than a year on the northwest coast of Tasmania.”
