Housing Bills: Greens give Labor a win and agree to pass Help to Buy and Build to Rent

The Greens have capitulated on their demands and will pass Labor’s two stalled housing bills, bringing an end to a lengthy stand-off and setting up a major election battle.

The Help to Buy Bill, which will allow up to 40,000 first homebuyers over four years to co-purchase homes with the Government; and the Build to Rent Bill, which gives tax incentives to developers who increase affordable rental housing, will now pass the Senate this week.

Housing advocates have applauded the Greens for putting “perfect policy and personality aside for the sake of what is absolutely needed”, as the minor party vowed to double their efforts and rally renters at the next election - due by May.

The downtrodden Greens said they had pushed “as far as they could” and would reluctantly pass the reforms after accepting “that Labor doesn’t care enough about renters to do anything meaningful for them”.

The about-face came after Housing Minister Clare O’Neil rejected the Greens’ last-ditch offer to narrow their demands and pass the Bills in exchange for more social housing funding.

Housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather, who put to the party room that they should wave the Bills through, said it was a “tragedy” that Labor had “decided they would rather have a fight with the Greens than do something meaningful on the housing crisis”.

“We have pushed as hard as we possibly could in this term of parliament to get Labor to do something more than tinker around the edges of this devastating housing crisis, and we got close,” he said, referring to the Government’s modelling on changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax.

“We were moments away from the most positive, significant changes in housing policy in this country in generations, that would have helped thousands of renters, but the Prime Minister blinked, and that is devastating for a lot of people in this country.”

Pressed on why the Greens had delayed the Bill for so long only to eventually roll over, Mr Chandler-Mather said the party would not apologise for “trying to get Labor to care about the five million renters that Labor wanted to leave behind”.

“You can’t accuse us of not having tried to fight for (renters and first home buyers), and we’ll be fighting for them all the way out to the next election,” he said.

Ms O’Neil said while she was glad the Greens had “finally seen the light”, the party’s stubbornness and the ensuing delay had proved costly.

“What the Greens have done here is held Australians’ home ownership dreams to ransom. If they had passed this when it was first put to the Parliament a year ago, 10,000 people would be in home ownership that are not there today,” she said.

“What we’ve received for two and a half years is relentless politicking that has cost Australians. It has cost them in home ownership opportunities. It has resulted in less social and affordable housing being built in our country.

“And the thing that really gets me is the hypocrisy - the Greens going out and saying that they care about housing, yet, coming into the Parliament and delaying action on these measures.”

The Greens had put their final offer to the Government on the weekend, watering down their demands on negative gearing, capital gains tax and rent caps.

They instead asked for Labor to commit an increased number of affordable homes to be allocated under Build to Rent, additional affordable homes be built under the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), and scrapping reimbursement requirements for beneficiaries of the proposed shared equity scheme if they go above the income threshold.

Ms O’Neil had earlier said the proposals were “nonsense”, and in some instances “unlawful, unworkable, and would result in fewer homes being built”.

Greens leader Adam Bandt said Labor had “given up on renters and first homebuyers” by refusing to negotiate, and voters would punish the Government at the next election.

“This time we’ll wave through Labor’s housing bills, and we will push at the next election, where we’ll take the fight to keep Peter Dutton out and push Labor into minority, to act on these unfair tax handouts and soaring increases,” he said.

“The issue is not going away. The Government had a golden opportunity in this Parliament to tackle the big drivers of the housing crisis in this country… and they’ve chosen not to do it.”

He denied the flip had been in response to a decline in support in recent state and local elections. The Greens lost a seat and a campaign to drastically increase their support base in the Queensland election, with many analysts pointing to their track record of blocking Labor’s housing plan.

Political strategist and Redbridge director Kos Samaras said there was no doubt housing would be a major issue at the next federal election.

He said the more that the Greens behaved in political point scoring and stood in the way of legislation, they risked pushing away the voters they were hoping to attract.

Redbridge’s latest political intention survey found the party were becoming “quite polarising” for those who don’t vote for them.

“That’s a problem if they’re trying to grow into a bigger party within the political landscape,” Mr Samaras said.

“They’ve built themselves a great, big wall between their supporters who always vote for them, and the people who they are trying to reach out to.”

John Engeler, chair of National Shelter said while there was no silver bullet to the housing crisis, the passage of the bills was a step in the right direction.

“What is really needed is to join hands across the aisle... I think most people sitting in the pub think that you’ve got to throw everything at this, because hopefully some of it works,” he said.