Affordable housing will be one of the Greens top five priorities in the event of a hung parliament, with Adam Bandt sharpening the party’s policy focus ahead of polling day.
In an interview with The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age, Bandt said the environmental party – which has released a raft of policies over the last three years – would release a list of the five key policies it would pursue.
Greens leader Adam Bandt.Credit:AAP
The party has already announced no new coal or gas projects and adding dental care to Medicare as two of those five policy priorities and affordable housing has now been added as the third.
The Greens’ housing policy is for 1 million publicly owned, affordable homes to be built over 20 years with the cost of the policy – which the Parliamentary Budget Office has warned is “uncertain and highly sensitive to the speed of construction” – estimated at $7.5 billion over four years and $22.9 billion over 10 years.
About 125,000 properties would be part of a shared equity ownership scheme, with people able to own between 50 and 75 per cent of their property, 125,000 would be so-called universal access rental homes and 750,000 would be new public or community housing.
Bandt said that neither the Coalition nor Labor were talking about “the climate crisis, or the housing crisis”.
“But it’s especially important now with the prospect of rate rises, if rates go up Labor and Liberal will throw rocks at each other about it, but neither will have a solution to fix it,” he said.
“We will make the housing affordability crisis a priority in any balance of power discussions. As the most powerful third party in the next parliament, the Greens will be critical to getting things done, we will be needed for any legislation the Coalition opposes [if Labor wins power].”
Labor’s Anthony Albanese has repeatedly said he would not enter into a power-sharing agreement with the Greens, but Bandt said that in the event there was a hung parliament, “I’d urge Labor not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.
Anglicare Australia executive director Kasy Chambers last week said Australia needed 500,000 new social and affordable rental properties across Australia.
Labor has promised a $10 billion fund to cut housing costs by putting money into a new Housing Australia Future Fund.
The policy would invest in 20,000 social housing properties in its first five years and another 10,000 affordable houses for frontline workers.
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