Housing affordability
Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (17:27): (218) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Consumer Affairs, and the action that I seek is the introduction of a two-year rent freeze and a permanent cap on rents thereafter of 2 per cent every 24 months, starting now. We are in the midst of a rental crisis. Rents have gone up 11.7 per cent in the last year, and they are set to rise another 11.5 per cent in the next year. I do not know how to make it any clearer: renters cannot do this anymore. They cannot afford another rent rise. Take Nina, a renter in my electorate, who was hit with a $200 a week rent rise. She has no options available to her other than to uproot her family, take her kid out of school and move in with her parents. She is one of the lucky ones – others are sleeping in cars and living in tents. While polling tells us that 60 per cent of Australians support a rent freeze, this government has its head in the sand. They think they are God’s gift for allowing renters to live with their cat. That just does not cut it. We need rent control to protect renters from more out-of-control rent rises.
Last week the Treasurer said that rent freezes would distort the market. Well, that is exactly what we need, because for too long at the hand of this government unbridled neoliberalism has skewed the economy in favour of property developers and property investors. It is time this government intervened to stop more people being turfed out of their homes and onto the street. This government is just as out of touch as the RBA, who today told us we should cram more people into our homes. Try telling that to the family of five crammed into a two-bedder or the overcrowded share house renters that have just turned their living room and their laundry into a bedroom to be able to afford the rent. This government has shown nothing but contempt for renters, and the minister in charge of renters, who has six properties himself, is trapped in a landlord’s bubble and cannot hear renters crying out for reform. Enough is enough. We need a rent freeze.