Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather says his party is still open to negotiating with federal Labor as the government’s Help to Buy policy is expected to be blocked in the Senate today.
The Greens are holding out for cuts to tax breaks on investment properties as a key condition for their support for the Help to Buy scheme, which Labor promised at the last election as a way for people to gain help from the government to own their first home.
Albanese offered no concession on the Labor housing policy despite the Greens’ calls for more spending on public housing, a national rent freeze to be arranged with the states and the removal of tax concessions on investment properties and capital gains.
Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather during question time in July.Credit: James Brickwood
Speaking on ABC News Breakfast, Chandler-Mather said Labor has not negotiated with the Greens “at all” to get the bill passed.
“We’re open to negotiate and I want to be crystal clear, they have offered literally nothing, it is genuinely shocking,” he said.
“We’re willing to negotiate but we won’t just rubber-stamp two bills that will drive up house prices and rents … why should we accept now, in the middle of the worst housing crisis in generations, a government that will do worse than tinkering around the edges rather than taking the action that people desperately need to make their lives liveable.”
Chandler-Mather criticised the Help to Buy policy, arguing that “99.2 per cent of people would be denied access”.
“House prices would be pushed up by the scheme because it puts more cash in people’s pockets to bid up the price of housing,” he said.
“Why shouldn’t the government take action on something that will substantially help all 5 million renters who might want to buy a home, not 0.8 per cent of them and then screw over the 99.2 per cent for whom this will drive up house prices.”
Source Agencies
