Labor have nothing to offer renters this election

I recently had the “opportunity” to ask the Prime Minister a question on the ABC’s Q and A program. Here’s what I asked:

What does the Labor party have to offer in the immediate term to the hundreds of renters evicted each month, or those facing unlimited rent increases that they simply cannot afford whilst the public housing wait lists around the country grow longer and longer - with most waiting years to secure a home? Will we continue to wait on your bandaid solutions for gaping wounds, or will you finally stop pretending you’re even going to offer us bandaids?

This wasn’t my original question that I had submitted to the ABC. The original question was even longer, so it’s understandable that they wanted to shorten it, but it was certainly a better question that gave Anthony less wriggle room. The original question I submitted was:

What does the Labor party have to offer in the immediate term to the hundreds of renters evicted each month, or those facing unlimited rent increases that they simply cannot afford whilst the public housing wait lists around the country grow longer and longer - with most waiting years to secure a home?
Even your long term policy solutions do not meet your own projected demand levels when it comes to housing, so what do you have to offer in the immediate term for the single mother who was evicted from her private rental yesterday, with no prospect of affording a rental tomorrow, let alone the ability for her to access public housing without forcing her to suffer for years due to your government’s inaction.
Will we continue to wait on your bandaid solutions for gaping wounds, or will you finally stop pretending you’re even going to offer us bandaids?

The ABC and Disclosures

Before Anthony was able to respond, Patricia Karvelas interjected and said it was important to declare that I was running as a candidate for “a left wing party” in the upcoming federal election - almost as if I was trying to hide this fact.

The way she framed this statement was particularly interesting, especially since I had declared on the ABC’s online questionnaire (that every audience member has to fill in) that I was a member of Victorian Socialists, I intend to vote for Victorian Socialists at the next election, I was wearing a badge that said “Vote 1 Victorian Socialists” and had been corresponding with a Q+A producer where they said the program would disclose my political affiliation when I asked the question.

PK likely had the words “Victorian Socialists” written down on the piece of paper in her hand that she kept referring to during my question, but she couldn’t bring herself to mention the party name.

Interestingly, when Anthony was hounded by another questioner who charged him with a number of conflated antisemitism accusations, she was not asked to disclose her political affiliation.

The ABC’s bias was on clear display that evening, enforced and invigorated by their favourite Zionist host.

The PM’s “Answer”

After PK had clarified my political affiliation, Anthony began his response, stating: “Well, we have increased rental assistance by 45% in our last two budgets.”

Unhappy with the way the direction he was heading, I interjected saying that Rent Assistance is a subsidy for landlords. This statement I made is in reference to a number of studies, including this one by AHURI which found that “CRA is likely to be shifted into higher rents in disadvantaged areas”.

The Commonwealth Rent Assistance scheme has a number of issues associated with it in it’s current form, including significant negative effects on low income renters, and it is why I do not spend much time advocating for increases to CRA. It is also simultaneously a very beneficial program that could be significantly improved with minimal changes.

If you’d like to read more about the government’s most recent increases to CRA, I’d suggest reading this blog entry published by Tenants NSW.

Anthony responded to my interjection saying “that’s immediate help”, which means he acknowledged the premise of my question being around renters’ need for immediate help. While Anthony is correct in saying that increasing rent assistance was immediate help, it did not provide any hope for the future, as the increase to rent assistance has already occurred, and quite simply, renters are still in crisis.

Anthony finishes his response to my question, stating:

The first time ever there's been two consecutive increases in rental assistance. Uh. We have, uh, through the national cabinet process instituted much stronger support for renters rights across the board that have been implemented in different ways by different state governments.

And we're addressing the issue of housing supply. If you don't address housing supply, uh, then you won't solve the housing problem. And I note Jacinta Allan, uh, today making some really strong comments here in Victoria about changing the laws, making sure that local government actually approves increased housing supply around railway stations, around areas that are appropriate as well. That's a part of, uh, the change that we've driven through, uh, the system.

We got a 32 billion dollar, uh, homes for Australians plan. One of those is, uh, to assist people in, in private rentals. Uh. We have a build to rent scheme that was held up, uh, by, uh, the, uh, Senate for a long time. It only passed in December, uh, but it will provide an incentive, uh, for more private sector, um, rental properties.

In addition to that, of course, uh, we have put more money into public and affordable housing than any government in Australian history. Now that was held up for a while too. Uh, you can't make a decision and then build a house and open it within, uh, uh, weeks or indeed even a few months.Uh, but that Housing Australia Future fund, uh, will make an enormous difference.

I’ve left the “uh”s in purely because they’re funny, but there’s a huge amount to unpack in the PM’s dribbled response.

I wasn’t given the chance to respond to Anthony by PK, unlike every other questioner in the room, which is unfortunate, but it was to be expected.

Issues with the PM’s Answer

Anthony’s response has a number of incredibly glaring issues, and I’d like to list them here.

Renters’ Rights

Anthony says that the National Cabinet process has “instituted much stronger renters’ rights across the board”. This statement is incredibly untrue, nor is it in any way, immediate term relief on offer from this government at the next election.

Renters’ rights are an issue all over the country for a variety of different reasons. Every State and Territory has rental laws that differ wildly to the next, and some States like Western Australia have some incredibly poor renter protections, not only for private tenants, but for those in public housing too. The thing that every State and Territory’s renters’ rights legislation has in common is that they are not enforced by the State.

The various Residential Tenancies’ Acts around the country rely on the renter to enforce their rights under the legislation, which in a large amount of cases is impossible to do because of the power imbalance that exists between renters and landlords - combined with record low vacancy rates across the country.

We know that the reality is: if you have an unscrupulous landlord acting in contravention to the Act and you decide to enforce your rights under the legislation, you can face eviction and potentially homelessness.

Increasing the number of rights that tenants have - while this is obviously a good thing - does not do anything to address the housing crisis we are experiencing. Landlords and real estate agents already act illegally, so increasing the number of words in the various Residential Tenancies Acts without actually requiring the State to enforce the words they’ve written, does not do anything to help.

I could write for a very long time about this, about how the various Civil and Administrative Tribunals around the country are designed for a particular type of person (landlords and real estate agents) and they are incredibly inaccessible to the average renter due to the time they’ll be required to take off work, seek legal advice, and a number of other things. There are so many glaring issues associated with our rental protection system, and when it comes to renters’s rights, it’s because a glaring contradiction exists.

We’ve spoken a number of times about the fact that the State is not neutral. The role of the State is to oppress the working class in favour of the ruling class - that is what it does, and that is what it is designed to do. It is a logical conclusion of this State apparatus that in the event protections are provided to renters against their landlords, then the State obviously wouldn’t be the one to enforce those rights. We are left to fight for ourselves against our landlords (as usual), but they’ll write some pretty words for us on a piece of paper every now and then.

Supply

I don’t even know where to start here, it’s a load of bullshit.

Anthony acknowledges in the latter half of his response that he is no longer concerned about addressing the core of my question which was what does his government have to offer in the immediate term to renters who are struggling. He effectively says there’s nothing on offer, and they’re working on a long term approach - which means that in the mean time, people will continue to struggle as the crisis gets worse.

Even his long term solution is doomed to fail. The government’s plan to increase supply, is to increase supply to a level that doesn’t even meet their own projected demand levels.

Obviously increasing housing supply is a good thing and as socialists, we must advocate for it - but it needs to be in a targeted fashion. It is not enough for the government to simply increase the supply of increasingly unaffordable homes, they must build public housing - not subsidise those trying to profit from the housing market, which is largely their plan.

The thing is, we don’t have a supply problem at the moment - we have a distribution problem.

In metropolitan Melbourne alone (excluding popular holiday destinations like the Mornington Peninsula), we have 100,000 vacant homes. At the last census, there were approximately 30,000 people experiencing homelessness in the entire State of Victoria. That’s more than 3 vacant homes for every single person experiencing homelessness.

A single vacant home usually can house much more than 1 person on average, and we have plenty of them. These include significantly under-utilised homes like AirBnBs that are only used for one month of the year during the Christmas period.

We have more than enough homes for everyone, the “market” - billed as the most efficient way to distribute things, simply just doesn’t distribute them effectively.

It is because of this distribution issue that focusing solely on increasing supply will not help anyone in the long term, let alone the immediate term - which is what I was asking about in the first place.

The government hasn’t even built any new homes after 2 years under their HAFF scheme.

Complaining about delay

Anthony complained a number of times in his response about the Greens’ delay of his the HAFF bill through the senate.

He claims that “we have put more money into public and affordable housing than any government in Australian history”, yet in the same breath says (again) this was delayed in the senate. This is a ridiculous statement considering the only reason his government is spending the most on public and affordable housing compared to any other is precisely due to the fact the Greens delayed the bill in the senate, in order to include these provisions in the bill.

Affordable Housing

Anthony spends a bit of time putting affordable housing and public housing in the same sentence so that we don’t distinguish between the two. That’s because public housing is comprehensively good, and affordable housing is comprehensively bad.

There are plenty of articles about the problems with the government’s “affordable housing” program - largely due to the fact that their definition of “affordable” is tied to market rent, which is by definition - unaffordable. I’ve spoken about this at length before and frankly can’t be bothered to do it again, but feel free to do your own research on the pitfalls of the Australian government’s affordable housing program and how it also exists to simply subsidise private landlords.

Don’t vote for the ghouls in the Labor party, or the ghouls in the Liberal Party. We can do better than this.