Labor’s centrepiece housing policy has been put on ice again after the Greens and the Coalition teamed up for a second time to postpone voting on the Housing Australia Future Fund in the Senate.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young moved a motion in the upper house on Monday to postpone the $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) legislation until October 16.
The Greens want to delay a vote on the legislation until after the next national cabinet meeting — due to be held in the middle of the year — as they ramp up the pressure on Anthony Albanese to co-ordinate a rent freeze with state and territory leaders.
“We know that the pressure that Australians in rental accommodation are feeling is extraordinary — you hear the stories every day. Our offices are inundated every day. They want us to act,” Senator Hanson-Young told parliament.
“If Labor acts on soaring rents at national cabinet, this Bill can pass. But until then, what we’re seeing is stubbornness and refusal to act.”
The opposition backed the Greens in their effort to postpone the Bill until October despite having ruled out supporting the HAFF months ago, with Liberal senator Anne Ruston telling parliament on Monday the policy amounted to nothing more than a gamble on the stock market.
The HAFF — an investment vehicle to raise funds for social and affordable housing projects – was one of Labor’s signature election promises but it is set to fail unless the government can get the Greens on side.
The government reintroduced the legislation that would set up the HAFF to parliament in this sitting fortnight without having reached a deal with the Greens, whose support it needs to pass the Bill through the upper house.
The Greens have been locked in tense negotiations with Labor for months, with the minor party using its balance of power position as leverage to call for relief for renters and more funding for social and affordable housing.
The Greens and the Coalition joined forces in May to defeat the government’s attempt to force a vote on the HAFF at the time.
In a last-ditch effort to convince the Greens not to sink the policy this week, the Prime Minister on Saturday announced the government would give $2bn to state and territory governments within weeks to spend on social housing projects.
But the Greens have seized on Mr Albanese’s announcement, claiming it proves Labor could easily spend more money on housing policy.
“We have been fighting long and hard to ensure that real money is put on the table to deal with the housing crisis,” Senator Hanson-Young told parliament on Monday.
“After months of being told that there was nothing there was nothing that the government could do — over the weekend, we see finally, a bit of a bit of cash stashed at the back of the couch, put on the table.
Labor senators lashed the attempt to delay the HAFF, speaking in parliament to accuse the Greens of unnecessarily delaying vital projects such as building housing in remote Indigenous communities and for women escaping family violence.
Crossbench senator Tammy Tyrrell, of the Tasmanian Jacqui Lambie Network, released a statement shortly after the Greens and Coalition teamed up on Monday, saying she was angry and disappointed by their decision to defer the HAFF.
“Every day that we delay passing this legislation, the housing list in Tasmania continues to grow. More people find themselves in need of emergency housing,” she said.
Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather told reporters later on Monday his party would keep up the pressure until the government capped or froze rent increases for the one-third of Australians who rented homes from private landlords.
“What we’ve said is that unlimited rent increases should be illegal. And certainly we’d be willing to negotiate with the government on a plan to cap rent increases,” he said.
“They pretended that they couldn’t spend money on housing, but we know that wasn’t true. We also know it’s not true that they can’t do anything for renters.”
Coalition Senate leader Simon Birmingham said the Liberals and Nationals had decided not to back the HAFF because they believed the policy wouldn’t make any meaningful short-term difference to social housing or the Australian housing market more broadly.
“We’ve always thought adding these billion dollars extra to government debt was a bad idea,” Senator Birmingham told Sky News.
Housing Minister Julie Collins earlier on Monday described the HAFF as a “secure, ongoing pipeline of funding” for social and affordable rental homes and warned postponing the policy would come at a cost.
“If this bill gets delayed until October, the Greens political party and the Liberals would have succeeded in delaying it for more than six months,” she said.
“Every six months is $250 million that could have gone to building more homes.”
Ms Collins said Australia’s peak housing and homelessness bodies and the state and territory housing ministers all supported the HAFF in its current form.
The government had previously said it would spend up to $500m each year from the returns generated by the HAFF on social and affordable housing, promising 30,000 new dwellings in its first five years.
In a bid to win over the Greens, the government has offered to remove the $500m cap and instead guarantee a fixed amount of $500m would be spent from the fund’s returns each year from the 2024-2025 financial year.
Additionally, this fixed amount of annual funding would be indexed against inflation from the 2029-2030 financial year.
And the yearly disbursement could be increased in the future by the treasurer and finance minister of the day through a special legislative instrument.