The $10bn Housing Australia future fund will not pass parliament this week, after the Greens and Coalition teamed up in the Senate to delay the bill until October, prompting warnings of a double dissolution election.
The impasse prompted a blunt crossbench message that the Greens were “hurting people” while Labor’s Dan Farrell called the Greens and Coalition “the axis of evil”.
A Greens motion proposing to delay the bill until 16 October to “allow time for national cabinet to progress reforms to strengthen renters’ rights” was voted up 37 votes to 23 about noon on Monday. A bid by Labor to vote on the bill on Tuesday was defeated.
That is despite the prime minister, Anthony Albanese offering an extra $2bn of direct spending on social and affordable housing on Saturday, and a warning from Farrell that the government would regard the delay as “failure to pass” the bill.
Such a failure is the first step in a double dissolution election, which would give the government the option of sending Australians back to the polls after a second failed attempt to pass a bill.
The Greens party room met on Monday morning, after which Senator Sarah Hanson-Young stood in the Senate announcing the planned delay.
Hanson-Young said the Greens “would like for us to postpone that bill until the prime minister can show what he is going to do to relieve real pressure on one-third of Australian households” who rent.
She said after “months of being told there was nothing the government could do”, Labor had found “a bit of cash stashed down the back of the couch”, promising $2bn over the weekend.
Farrell, Labor’s deputy Senate leader, in the chamber labelled the Greens and the Coalition the “axis of evil”.
The housing minister, Julie Collins, said “every day of delay is more than $1.3m that does not go to housing for people that need it”.
The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, and housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather, were due to discuss the party’s stance at a press conference on Monday afternoon.
In a statement, Bandt said “unlimited rent increases should be illegal”.
“The pressure is now on the prime minister and the Labor premiers to act on a rent freeze and limit rent increases.
“This is a test for Labor. It’s wall-to-wall Labor across the mainland, so rent rises are their responsibility.”
Chandler-Mather said “pressure works” in seeking outcomes for renters, urging Greens supporters to “hold the line”.
In question time, Albanese labelled the Greens and Coalition an “unholy alliance” and argued that a rent freeze would “destroy supply”.
“[The Greens] deal in protests, we deal in progress,” he said. “They see issues to campaign on, we see challenges to act on. They want to build their profile, we want to build more homes.”
The bill sets up a $10bn future fund to invest and pay out earnings of at least $500m a year to invest in social and affordable housing.
Chandler-Mather has spent months attacking the future fund model as a form of “gambling”, forcing concessions from the government including guaranteeing the $500m annual disbursement as a minimum, not a maximum, and the $2bn of direct investment.
In April, the Albanese government asked national cabinet and housing ministers to examine renters’ rights, which the Greens hope could develop into a rent freeze or an Australian Capital Territory-style rent cap.
But Labor has so far refused the Greens’ calls to set up a fund of at least $1bn to incentivise states and territories to institute a rent freeze for two years.
The motion reads: “That, to allow time for national cabinet to progress reforms to strengthen renters’ rights as advised in the prime minsters’ press release of 28 April 2023, including reforms to limit rent increases, further consideration of the bill and two related bills be made an order of the day for 16 October.”
The Senate’s decision means there will be a further four months of impasse on the bill because the government needs the Greens’ 11 votes to pass it.
The country’s peak housing bodies called for the debate deadlock to be broken and for the fund to be passed this week. That call was backed by senators David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie, who announced they would support the bill.
The crossbench senator Tammy Tyrrell said by continuing to oppose the bill, the Greens were not looking after the people who elected them.
“You’re harming people. You’re not allowing them to have a house into the future,” she told reporters.
“They are the ones that are holding all of these people to ransom and I think that’s a terrible thing.
“At the end of the day you’re hurting people.”
