The Greens’ decision to wave through Labor’s ill-conceived housing fund this week for an extra billion dollars clearly caused ructions within the ranks.
The Australian Financial Review’s Phil Coorey reported that Greens colleagues forced housing spokesman and arch-NIMBY Max Chandler-Mather into doing a deal with Labor to end the housing stalemate (and, doubtless coincidentally, take away the possibility of giving Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a double-dissolution trigger on an election commitment to build lots of houses) — a claim disputed by the Greens, who insist Chandler-Mather led the process within the partyroom.
Credit where it’s due, Chandler-Mather has played a clever hand in his housing role, lifting his profile from accidental MP, and got up Labor’s nose plenty along the way. But he and leader Adam Bandt painted themselves into a very tight corner with their rigid insistence that nothing short of a national rental cap would move them to support Labor’s bill to set up a permanent housing fund.
Having given way to Labor on emissions targets last year and the safeguard mechanism earlier this year, the Greens needed an issue on which to differentiate themselves, and housing served its purposes perfectly, even if the affluent urban electorates that send Greens MPs to Parliament don’t want higher-density housing or social housing.
But the more they insisted that only rent controls, entirely beyond the capacity of any prime minister to deliver, would see the fund pass, the more they set themselves up as the fall guys for a government campaign on their opposition to building social and affordable housing.
So in the end they did a deal, though it’s surprising they secured only an extra $1 billion, and not on an ongoing basis. But Bandt is rightly factoring in the $2 billion Albanese threw into the pot in June to sweeten the deal then. Clearly quite a few Greens are underwhelmed: prominent Brisbane Green Jonathan Sriranganathan attacked Bandt on Twitter for failing to extract enough concessions.
What this ignores is that Bandt and Chandler-Mather were at a dead end on the rent cap front; the only direction housing was going to go in from here was for Labor to portray the Greens as joining the Coalition in blocking the construction of more social housing, with the media more and more febrile about an early election. So they cut their losses, took some pocket change and called it a win.
The net result is good — the federal government is now in the game of funding social housing long term courtesy of Labor, but the Greens have got more money into the pool that will lead to more housing sooner.
The only risks, as we’ve argued before, are the waste of fund management fees operating a housing fund derived from borrowings, when the government could simply have committed $500 million a year to social housing from the budget, and the possibility the states will simply scale back their social housing investment as funding from the Commonwealth ramps up.
Perhaps state-based Greens can play watchdog on that.
Did Labor play the Greens just right? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Update: This article has been amended to add that the claim that Chandler-Mather was pressured by colleagues to conclude a deal with the government is contested by the Greens.
Chandler-Mather is far from being ‘an accidental MP’, Bernard can do better than this limp label. Chandler-Mather put in the hard yards campaigning for two federal elections & has been active in his electorate in the Griffith community. No accident there, rather applied determination to contribute politically.
If anyone can point to a more articulate federal MP who clearly answers journalists’ questions I am eager to hear a name.
From the use of words with negative connotations, I get the distinct impression that BK despises the Greens……………..
MCM is as accidental an MP as AOC is a Rep.
The surprise is there aren’t more of them. When are folks going to realise the only folks who might represent them need to be elevated from average circumstances?
When asked about the relevance of high immigration in the face of the housing crisis
Oops!
Chandler-Mather replied that “Australia was built on immigration “.
Sweet Jesus.
Yeah, the Greens sure aren’t perfect.
They’re a political party, for a start. Not sure how representatives are meant to rep when they must first toe a line of groupthink.
They might be a political party on paper, but the Greens have so far not managed to get Groupthink happening………..
……….and until they can all sing from the same songsheet they will remain a group of loosely-aligned individuals.
(….and sadly not become a genuine third force).
Or is it that they’re just too small a party to get away with having factions.
More likely that every faction has one member………………
the affluent urban electorates that send Greens MPs to Parliament don’t want higher-density housing or social housing.
I’ve seen this myth before on Crikey.
Bandt is my local member. There is a huge amount of of high density and social housing here in inner Melbourne.
The public and social housing was built long before the Greens existed, as were the neighbourhood houses and community health centres.
I lived in inner Me;bourne for decades and the Greens live in very nice places, thank you very much.
I also remember their shrieking and wailing when any new places for low income people were being planned.
After being active in my local community for years I moved out because I was just too old and poor to live in “Greenland” surrounded by youngies who had grown up in Black Rock, Camberwell and Hawthorn and brought their grannies’ behests to buy in the inner suburbs
The Greens are the only vaguely mainstream group who recognise the importance of public housing and public services, its (inevitable) deterioration under successive and increasingly right-wing Governments, and want to build more of it.
Federal governments don’t approve housing developments. I would take a look at Greens on local councils, who regularly oppose almost all new apartment developments.
Clifton Hill’s Sambell Lodge is such an example.
Can someone please tell me how to do markup here? I’m sick of only having caps to emphasise with.
The text box you type your comments into should have a line at the bottom with buttons for bold, italics, underline, etc. Just select the text and hit the button.
Alternatively, just select the text and hit the appropriate shortcut key (eg: ctrl+b in Windows) like you would in Word or a similar app.
The quote mentioned parliament.
Though I can understand the politics of it – Labor would burn the place to the ground before conceding anything of significance – you’ve only got to see people still lying about the CPRS over a decade on to see how it would end up.
An extra billion bucks is nice I guess, but it’s insignificant in the larger picture.
Yes, but that’s an extra billion. Added to the two billion the Greens had already blackmailed, threatened and shamed the ALP into throwing at the Housing crisis. Given that the ALP’s original plan was to speechify about how serious the crisis is and then spend about… (back of the envelope calculation)… zero dollars during the current term of government, I think the Greens have done pretty well, don’t you?
I mean, FFS, first the government tells us about How Terrible This Crisis Is and how they – unlike their predecessors – are going to Do Something About It. Then they come up with the dumbest plan since Baldrick retired to pretend to deal with it – except that their plan was specifically designed to avoid doing anything. Then it takes threats from another party before the government admits that, well if you insist, maybe we can get off our backsides and make at least a token effort.
And the plan to avoid doing anything cost $10,000,000,000. Which has to be borrowed. At least I know when I’m being insulted. Unlike some in the media.
“Borrowed” from treasury. So the government has to pay interest and taxes on the money back to themselves. Hardly seems like an expense. Or are you pushing the myth that Australia borrows from China for everything? The budget is in surplus. Why borrow money when you’re already earning?
I’m happy to stand corrected. However, if the budget is so healthy then why doesn’t the government put the ten billion into building 20,000 houses? There are many pressing and expensive issues to tackle, but the government seems to be frozen like the rabbit in the headlights, incapable of sensible action on anything.
I have never heard the myth you mention, probably because I have nothing to do with social media, unless the Crikey comments here count as that?
On reflection, I think that any organisation which is, say, a trillion dollars in debt, and which has several billion spare yet does not pay off some of the debt with it or at least put it to good use such as, in this case, bricks and mortar rather than putting it into the stock market, urgently needs a new board and a new executive.
The shoolboy economics rather ignores the fact that Treasury sell government bonds (for actual cash, and yes a lot of that is raised from overseas governments, including China, who for some unimaginable reason, consider Australian Government Bonds to be quite dependable), to raise the money, to lend to government. The Bonds carry an interest coupon, which is paid to the holders. There are no taxes on debt. Also, other than government instrumentalities (like The Future Fund, the MRFF, and now the HAFF, which all have legislated mandates as to what they are allowed to invest in), the Government per se does NOT invest in the stock market. A considerable portion of the Budget is assigned to paying interest on the outstanding debt, and then to trying to reduce it.
…..and yes, it would make a lot more sense if the government actually employed builders direct to build social housing (and at the rate they are going broke, it would save a lot of money on welfare), but that would mean that the cost would appear on the government books (and thus open them up to Dutton squawks about “Debt & Deficit” – regardless of the fact that the vast majority of Australia’s debt was created by the LNP). By creating an “Off Balance Sheet” entity, and then funding it with debt, it disguises it. Politics, not common sense.
“acrh-NIMBY” is a really stupid epithet, and completely beneath the author.
Bloke holds up a sign supporting one constituent campaign and he’s suddenly an individual who cares more about their own private property concerns than the public good.
It was facile when it blew up on Twitter, and it’s no less facile even if it comes with “Bernard Keane” in the byline this time.
And I readily concur with the rest of the content.
In response to ALP accusing Greens of NIMBYism I understood that the Greens did an audit of suitable sites in their inner city Brisbane electorates and most unsuitable because of flooding. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m relieved Max is advocating for the third of Australians who rent because who else is. Too many ALP politicians have investment properties and have no idea of the insecurity that tenants endure. So many COIs.
I vaguely recollect one of the developments Max opposed contained no social housing and was to be built on a flood plain by raising the ground so that the flood waters flowed around it into other people’s properties. But details like this are too much for lazy journalists.
Greens have largely been the only ones going to bat for us sewer dwellers, and yet they’re chastised for either going too hard or not going hard enough. Hopefully the more and more sears they win from the ineffectual big L’s, the bigger their influence on enacting real and positive change.