An acknowledgment that “housing is a basic human right” has been removed from a draft of the Labor Party’s new policy platform, prompting the Greens to claim the government is “running away from the platform they were elected on”.
The crossbench party, which is locked in a high-stakes battle with Labor over the shape of a $10 billion housing initiative that Labor is trying to pass through the Senate, has gone through the publicly available draft 2023 Labor Party platform with a fine-tooth comb.
Housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather pointed to a number of sections on housing that had featured in the platform Labor took to the 2022 election, but which have been either omitted or watered down in the new draft.
The passages included the pledge that Labor “recognises that the responsibility of funding the construction and repair of social housing … is the shared responsibility of the Commonwealth and state and territory governments”.
A passage in the new draft reads: “Labor believes that improving housing outcomes for Australians requires all levels of government, industry and stakeholders to work together.”
Chandler-Mather said: “People desperately want the government to do more on housing, but Labor’s running away from the platform they were elected on and the solutions we know will actually work to tackle the housing crisis, that’s having enormous impacts across the country.”
Crikey understands the draft, made available for consultation on the party’s website and dated May 19, is not necessarily the final one that will be debated at its national conference in August.
Crikey understands the policy platform will continue to be consulted on until the conference in August.
Housing Minister Julie Collins described the government’s housing agenda as “ambitious” in a statement to Parliament’s question time on Tuesday. She said many Australians faced “housing challenges … whether it be for renters, buyers or those trying to find a safe affordable place to call home”.
“We are trying to turn this around, but it will take coordinated action and indeed significant investments. Our ambitious housing agenda is ambitious because it needs to be,” she said.
On Tuesday Labor postponed a Senate debate on its social housing fund after the Greens refused to support it in its current form. The fund is designed to build 30,000 social and affordable homes using future returns on a $10 billion investment to pay for them, without dipping into the budget.
The Greens, emboldened by the power of its 11-person bloc in the Senate, have demanded the government spend at least $2.5 billion on public and affordable housing and spearhead a national rent freeze, down from the $5 billion they initially floated. On Tuesday they rejected a government offer to guarantee at least $500 million a year for new social and affordable housing.
Both sides have accused the other of playing politics with the issue. “Sadly, this has become all about the politics. And it shouldn’t be,” Collins told question time. “This is not an opportunity for doorknocking. It’s not an opportunity for campaigning. It’s about people on the ground, people that need homes the most.”
Some of the housing policies that were included in Labor’s current platform but omitted from the new draft include:
- “Labor acknowledges that access to safe and secure housing is a basic human right and believes that housing affordability is one of the biggest issues facing Australians.”
- “Labor recognises that the responsibility of funding the construction and repair of social housing, including both public and community housing, is the shared responsibility of the Commonwealth and state and territory governments.”
- “Labor will work with the states, territory and local governments and industry stakeholders to help Australians who rent to have access to more secure, affordable, quality, long term housing.”
- “Labor will work with the state, territory and local governments, local organisations and the private sector to reduce homelessness and support people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.”
The party’s national conference will be held at the Brisbane Convention Centre from August 17 to 19.
Good work by the Greens to expose how Labor is not as solid for its election commitments as it pretends. Rather, it is selective because there are core promises and non-core promises. The former are the ones that put Labor in lock-step with the Liberals; for example, we can be confident the Stage Three tax cuts are here to stay no matter what. The latter are those promises that could tar Labor with being even mildly progressive, such a commitment to housing as a human right. Those promises can be ditched as soon as they begin to look like too much hard work.
This all fits with Labor’s Grand Strategy to rule for the foreseeable future. It is the New Liberal Party, taking over the territory that was the Liberal’s political heartland before the Liberals degenerated so disastrously into a repulsive, incompetent, dishonest, corrupt gang of ideological crazies. Labor can soak up disillusioned Liberal voters in addition to its own voters and be completely secure in power as the Liberals are becoming irrelevant, so long as it does not bleed too much support to smaller parties on its left such as the Greens. No wonder Labor loathes the Greens so much.
It’s a non-core human right, clearly. Labor might be better framing it as a foundational human aspiration. Then like all good neoliberals they can support the aspiration without actually intervening in the market to correct the dysfunction.
Your sarcasm is well-judged; housing is a human right; moreover, even Xi Jinping has recently reaffirmed it – after the private sector Evergrande disaster in China: “houses are for living in, not for investment vehicles”.
Not entirely so.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/15/nsw-to-allow-taller-denser-property-developments-while-curtailing-power-of-councils
We can all go and live in high rise concrete dog boxes in the shadows of other high rise concrete dog boxes apparently, if we’re to squeeze an extra 7,000,000 people into Sydney and Melbourne.
Barely a peep from any politician of any persuasion about this, it is presented as a fait accompli. Any questioning of it attracts abuse about NIMBYism or the perennial stand-by, racism, to shut down debate.
Labor might soak up some disillusioned Liberal voters but it will lose a lot more to Greens, Teals and independents as it illogically adopts LNP policies of attacking the vulnerable.
A minority ALP government dependent of Greens, Teals and independents to govern at all seems our only chance of actual progress.
As soon as the next election could be a reasonable guess.
That is pretty much what we have now. The ball is well and truly in Labor’s court to recognise reality.
Labor clearly calculates the balance lies on the other side: the ex-Liberal support it gains more than compensates for voters it loses on the left. This calculation has worked so far and I don’t see any real evidence for your belief it is will fail any time soon. The Greens are a threat, as I said, but they still lack credibility with the great majority of voters and they are awfully good at giving their opponents ammunition to attack their credibility — fairly or unfairly, it all does damage. Independents are great fun and some are very good indeed, but they are almost entirely irrelevant so far as getting a majority in the lower house, and therefore being in government, is concerned, which is why I did not mention them. Labor will not worry for a nano-second about independents disturbing its hold on power. I also did not mention the teals because Labor is now firmly planted on their territory. Their appeal is being Liberals without the baggage that makes the current Liberal Party so disgusting. That is exactly where Labor is now, so Labor is very well placed to extinguish the teals — voters who like teals will quickly realise they might as well vote Labor for the same reasons, and some teals might choose to join Labor and enjoy the prospect of actually having power. If that fails, in the unlikely event teals hold the balance of power at some point, Labor can happily work with them. No, as things stand, if the Liberals do not sort themselves out, the only way Labor’s hegemony can be undermined is by parties on its left. That means the Greens are the only real problem for Labor right now, and they are still only a small problem.
I agree that the Greens are over-achievers when it comes to shooting themselves in the feet. It’s a shame, but that seems to be the way it is. Labor is relatively comfortable that most Greens voters (rightly) detest the Liberals sufficiently to preference Labor over LNP. I do think some of the so-called Teals are doing a good job, and those who are will likely be re-elected. I don’t agree with them a lot of the time, but many seem to have a fundamental integrity that most of the career hacks in both Liberal parties lack. (Literally) more power to them.
However, I’d like to think that Aus could stand up a new left party that could focus on the “real” issues, i.e. the political economy that entrenches existing wealth and pulls up the ladder after it. A return, in other words, to former “Labor” values: housing, education and welfare as rights not privileges, social ownership (or at least regulation) of key industries and (paradoxically) a return to values that are not solely economic. Real action on the existential threat of climate change.
I know. The prospects are bleak, but you’ve got to hold hope.
Maybe it’s possible to take some paint off Labor by hammering the point that they stole the Teals’ identity.
The Greens don’t have to convince the great majority of voters. Just the right voters. As they demonstrated in Brisbane.
That episode seem to have struck a cord with Labor. Note Collin’s reference to door knocking and campaigning?
How the bulk of Vic’s Socialist Left will vote in any DD will be interesting.
can only hope.
It’s difficult to see where voters are going to leak to Labor.
Moderate Libs are surely already voting Teal, or Labor, or at least preferencing Labor over anyone else.
On the other hand, I think it’s easy to see non-Rustadon Labor voters going to Greens. As much as I am mystified by Labor voters who are only just becoming… disillusioned… by the current Government, there certainly seem to be a growing number of them floating around comment sections and the socialz.
I would not be surprised to see the ALP primary vote at <30% at the next election. It will be tragic comedy if they are carried over the line into majority Government again by Greens preferences.
And yet that’s how our non-proportional voting system works. Perhaps at some point we will find the tipping point where the first preference vote of both major parties becomes small enough to destabilise their hold and neither has a majority. It would be interesting to see their response. When something similar happened in the Republic of Ireland recently, the two major parties formed an unprecedented coalition simply to keep out the newly insurgent Sinn Féin. Quite a lesson to all those voters who had believed Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were bitter rivals. Similarly, I would not be at all surprised to see Labor and the Liberals/Nationals, if neither can form government, getting into bed together if that is what it takes to exclude the Greens. In fact, I would be amazed if they did not.
Still, for all it might be a tragi-comedy for Green preferences to put Labor in power (again), if Green voters do not put Labor over the Liberals, how would you describe the alternative of those preferences putting the Liberals in power instead?
I would describe it as unlikely since only about 15% of Greens voters preference Liberals over Labor (and I’d take a punt that’s only happening in a few specific places, though I haven’t looked at a detailed analysis).
The trend on that is already downwards (was 20% in 2019), and I imagine it will continue to decrease as the Liberals get wackier and more Teals appear.
There’s no doubt it is unlikely. My question was not about probability, it was where on the scale of tragi-comic outcomes you would place it, compared to those preferences putting Labor in power?
Somewhere between King Lear and Monty Python?
For years, Greens voters have shown a capacity to vote strategically. A Greens how to vote card putting Labor just before the Libs in carefully selected seats is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
Last May. I counted 15 seats, including mine, where Labor flopped across the line, thanks to Green’s preferences. I’m sure Green’s strategists could come up with a plan for at least some of those.
And then there is Grayndler where a lot of fairly well informed renters and climate change aware voters live.
Is it not a sensible option for the Greens and Labor to form a relationship where they co-exist? they could get plenty of progressive stuff done.
the Greens risk over shooting their opposition to the housing policy. I had hop[ed they had learned there lesson about making voting against some positive movement in favour of all or bust.
No, that is the last thing Labor is going to do. Labor’s current strategy makes Labor more likely to work with the Liberal Party than the Greens: AUKUS, Stage Three, the NACC etc. etc.. It is fundamental for Labor in its current iteration to have nothing to do with the Greens. Labor is putting all its effort into courting anyone at risk of voting Liberal and central to that is rejecting everything the Greens ask for. The fact Labor has always loathed the Greens makes this easier, of course. Getting progressive stuff done has not mattered much to Labor for decades, but now, with the scent of Liberal blood in its nostrils and its horrible experience in the 2019 election, it has lost all interest in being progressive.
The Greens have tried very hard to get a compromise with Labor on the housing policy but Labor refuses to listen. Of course. Labor will not make any compromise. The only outcomes Labor can accept are getting its policy through on its terms or else getting nothing, after which it will put all the blame on the Greens and be happy about it. Your comment is an example of why Labor is confident this will work. You are already blaming the Greens, although all the intransigence for a rotten inadequate policy is on the Labor side.
Meanwhile while Fake Labor and Fake Greens fight each other over scraps, Rome continues to burn. Labor rebooting mass immigration and the Greens refuse to talk about it. Maybe the population can just go eat cake.
Yes,
Shame.
It’s a re-run of when the Greens saved this country by not falling for Rudd’s execrable, worse than useless, CPRS.
They have been blamed by the brain-dead right and commentariat even though he did not accept any input from them.
As for the totally compromised apparatchiks pushing that line for over a decade, what would one expect from podcreatures?
Not asking ‘how do they sleep at night‘ because they don’t – too busy sucking the blood from any remaining True Believers still stumbling around the urban wastelands left by those evil neolibs Hawke, Keating & Kelty.
Good analysis.
The progressive left are Labor’s greatest asset. For the voter in the centre they make the ALP look incredibly reasonable. As does the LNP.
However. Labor seems quite prepared to abandon whatever remains of its progressive left (frequently, derisively, called “the dreamers”) as it fights for what it sees as the “sensible centre”. And so joins the previously small l Lib wets in fighting over the same centre right or hard right vote.
Any impression you have of an overlap between Greens and Labor is all down to Labor pretending not be the new LNP. Not a shred of reality to it at all.
To which “positive movement” are you referring?
If such a phantom existed it would be anathema and shot on sight by the compromised functionaries of this utterly untrustworthy government.
It seems like a good fit but recent history and the current government’s viseral fear of progressive policies; suggests not. In fact, if you listen to many Labor heavies’ speeches; the Greens are the enemy.
It should also be remembered just how much ALP cooperation helped the Abbott- Morrison shambles pass some of the most undemocratic legislation since Federation. So close are they, in fact, some political analysts label the Labor-Liberal’s cozy relationship as Australia’s political cartel.
Labor is not always what it seems; it depends on what Labor power bloc is calling the shots, in spite, as we are now witnessing, the alleged leanings of its parliamentary leader.
100% agree that PR is a much more “democratic” system – there is growing support in the UK for this. I’m not hopeful that the very conservative Aus electorate could cope with that change. FFS, it is losing its mind over a very modest, reasonable and decent proposal in the Voice. I think that tactical voting and targeted Greens campaigns against sitting ALP members in electorates where it makes sense is the only (slim) chance I can see…
Agreed. I was a rusted (ish) on, having grown up in Wollongong with a family of unionised, Labor voting Steel workers and public school teachers ( I think my parents, aunties and uncles bar one had these jobs. The one become a corporate accountant. He tells shit stories at Christmas). Joined Labor at 18. Left last year and joined The Greens.
Two reasons – the Climate is borderline irreparably rooted, and The Greens are now more the party of the working class than Labor. Sad but true. If The Greens also lose their minds, I guess next stop is the Socialist Alliance
There is a lot of that about.
It’s no longer a case of ‘more in sorrow than anger’ but the exact opposite, “more in rage & disgust” at what has become of the workers’ party.
Hope springs eternal or for at least 12 frustrating months; particularly after 9 wasted LNP years; that Labor can find some courage or if that is too big an ask; some ambition.
I would look for a drop in Labor’s 32% first preferences as some previously strategic Labor in the House, Greens in the Senate voters say bugger it, pull the pin entirely and go all in on a full Green ticket.
Question is are there enough of those to deliver the Green’s cherished aim of increased House representation?
Great work from the Greens nitpicking pointlessly whilst obstructing any progress and achieving nothing. At least they’re consistent.
Rubbish. You are describing Labor.
Congratulations to the Greens for holding Labor’s feet to the fire (having already shown compromise & a willingness to cooperate).
Max Chandler-Mather is not ‘playing politics’ as accused. Homelessness is an issue he understands at the grass roots level unlike the major party MPs who are older & more removed from the crisis. The Greens’ motives in this are definitely not political – rather their impetus is social & ethical.
Agree. Penny Wong’s pathetic attack in Parliament on Chandler-Mather, saying that his criticisms of Labor’s housing policy are an ego exercise on his part, illustrate the depths that Labor will go to criticise the Greens instead of engaging with them on better policy. And please, Albanese, no more ‘no one will be left behind’ lies.
Labor has been very disingenuous. Max Chandler-Mather opposes building on flood plains, Labor has tried to turn that into opposing medium density housing.
Yes, Albanese repeating that misinformation in Question Time again today. Shameless, knowing Chandler-Mather has no right of reply.
Indeed. So, this 10 billion fund sounds like it won’t build much but if it does, it will be building affordable and social housing on flood plains *sigh* The properties will be uninsurable.
There are provisions in the Standing and Sessional Orders to correct a misrepresentations (see Sections 68 and 69 in Chapter 8) so Chandler-Mather does have some right of reply – you’ll often see the option used after Question Time.
He is ex-Labor (aka a rat). It wouldn’t matter what he said; the True Believers will go at him.
I thought Chandler-Mather was quite impressive when I saw him on Insiders – easily more so than any other guest this year, and with Speers looking somewhat stunned – but no doubt that makes him a target to avoid actually debating the issue.
In 2019 Labor promised to act on Negative Gearing and Capital Gains Tax deductions. It has now abandoned housing tax justice. Labor used to take public housing seriously- no longer. Where is the 14yo boy who organised a rent strike to protect his single mum’s public housing?? Why has the 60yo man given up on renters??
The Ship’s Rat pretty much covered the why’s. This is an emerging tragedy, not just for the poor bastards being rent-gouged and facing homelessness, but for the Labor Party itself; once a proud defender of the poor and the downtrodden, and now a staunch defender of the upper middle status quo.
because the ends justifies the means … unfortunately the only “ends” Labor seem interested in, is staying in power – which unfortunately means “the means” of more homelessness, more violence, more crime, more death is all for nothing
makes you wonder how the c|ts manage to sleep at night
If Labor has $10 billion to allocate to housing what is the point of locking up $9.5 billion of it instead of spending it? That is not how government programs are run. We pay our taxes and expect them to be put to good use rather than be used as an economic play thing.
The Labot Government is a year old but already it is showing signs of abandoning its principles. Our next question should be Why?
The only principle they have is to to be in government
This is why we are screwed. Julie Collins with her partner owns 3 properties. Look it up in the Register of Interests. A house in Rose Bay where the median price for a 3 beddie is $840k, a place to stay in Griffith, Canberra where the the median price is currently a cool $2M and an investment property in Toowoomba QLD. No wonder the ALP want to remove housing as a basic human right…it would definitely interfere with the accumulation of property by its members.
Rose Bay? Median price $840,00???
Bargain!! I’ll buy 5.
According to realestate.com.au the median price for three bedroom house is over $4m and a three bedroom apartment $2m.
That’s probably the yearly rent.