While Opposition Leader Peter Dutton didn’t have a wonderful budget week by all accounts, it must have given him some joy to see the government and Greens arguing over how to establish more social and affordable housing in Australia. It’s actually a shame that the federal parliament is even discussing how to fund housing that is affordable as many years ago each state and territory had a ‘housing commission’ or ‘housing trust’ that was constantly maintaining their existing housing stock and building more to cater for growth. In the era of economic privatisation, government wasn’t meant to compete with the private sector, the claim being it was seen to be ‘crowding out’ the private sector, which leads us to where we are now.
It’s not difficult to demonstrate that privatisation of rental housing has not worked – witness the rort that is negative gearing on multiple ‘investment properties’ and the cost of housing anywhere near services in our larger cities. Sadly, it seems that neither of the major political parties have the courage to even have a discussion about reining in the excesses. The housing rental subsidy increase in the last budget will be swallowed up very quickly by those that really only see their tenants as a business opportunity.
In regard to the housing affordability legislation currently before the Senate Albanese’s ALP and Bandt’s Greens are both as equally bad as each other. Harking back to the Constitution, the Senate is a house of review. In this case, the Senate has reviewed the ALP social and affordable housing legislation and given it a rating of ‘could do better’. By the same token, the Greens should have learnt over the years that perfection is usually unobtainable and a good percentage of something is better than everything of nothing.
For example, while the Greens might have had genuine issues with parts of Rudd’s original emissions reduction scheme and voted it down, Rudd then shelved the legislation rather than compromise. The net effect was that we didn’t have any sort of effective scheme for most of the past decade and a half. Regardless of the claims of the Greens or the ALP, they both made bad decisions and we are paying the consequences of their refusal to compromise in 2009 to this day. They would have had 15 years to ‘tweak’ the 2009 legislation to better meet the objective of emissions reduction had they have passed it.
Should the 2009 emission scheme been legislated, it would have had sufficient time to demonstrate that most of the then Opposition Leader Abbott’s subsequent claims regarding the Gillard Government carbon reductions legislation were the complete and utter fabrications they have since been shown to be. Don’t forget, even his former Chief of Staff and now Sky ‘after dark’ talking head Peta Credlin admitted years later that their claims the Gillard Government carbon reduction scheme legislation was a ‘carbon tax’ was ‘just brutal politics’ rather than in any way accurate.
The debate over the housing legislation is similar. Both parties are claiming their scheme is better for a whole lot of different reasons and they are both probably correct in their claims, while ignoring the benefits of the other parties proposals. However standing there and arguing their version of creation of affordable and social housing is the only version that should be considered is absolute bollocks. Arguing over how something is going to be done is not actually doing anything to fix the issue. There needs to be compromise. The Coalition won’t assist here – after all if they were at all concerned about affordable housing over the ‘rights’ of those that negative gear multiple ‘investment properties’ they had nearly a decade in power to do something, and didn’t. Instead their ‘enduring legacy’ is the tax reforms’ that gave a less than a take away coffee per day in tax cuts to those that earn the least and will give thousands to those that earn the most (assuming the Albanese Government doesn’t do something to change the legislation).
According to this ABC report, only one in four voters under 40 gave the Coalition their vote in the 2022 election. The rest are now looking for a return on their investment
Their message to the government was simple: you were elected off our backs, and now we’ve been forgotten.
“The government is taking a different view of young people than they should be,” President of the National Union of Students, Bailey Riley, told Hack.
“The reason there was a change of government from Liberals to Labor was because of young people.”
“We voted them in with this mandate for change and mandate for action, and they’re not realising that mandate still exists.”
And despite the government’s message that they budget was carefully configured to take pressure of the cost of living (from the same ABC report)
Unfortunately, not all young people are on board with that.
Young people want radical change, and whether you see that as a folly or a virtue largely depends on your age and political leaning.
Some economists agree with the ‘radical change’ approach
In her pre-budget speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, head of the Grattan Institute Danielle Wood, said now is the time for bold, radical change.
“Overall, the picture is a budget of incremental change. It will make some things a bit better and not too much worse. But ultimately it will only play footsies with the big social and fiscal challenges,” she said.
When Brisbane’s LNP Lord Mayor, Adrian Schrinner, is arguing that government in general need to do more for those that don’t have a secure roof over their head by suggesting the disused COVID isolation accommodation facilities at Pinkenba be used for homeless, the ALP has a problem. Schrinner is also playing politics here by announcing his Council will fund some bus and library services to the disused centre in the upcoming Council budget – but apparently is still going through the process of submitting a proposal to the federal government who own the facility.
While the Greens are claiming that Tasmanian Senator Jacquie Lambie has been ‘bought out’ by the government on this issue, the absolute frustration as recorded in this video link from The Guardian while saying
So please, for you people over here, that think you have a social conscience, do you really want to keep playing with people’s lives? Do you really?
to the Greens Senators in the Chamber says it all.
And she has a point.
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