Thursday, 2 May 2024

Short-stay accommodation

Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (17:21): (637) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Consumer Affairs, and the action that I seek is for the government to free up 13,000 existing homes for renters and first home buyers to live in by properly regulating Airbnb. There are 48,000 homes, entire homes, on Airbnb in Victoria – property investors hoarding homes to use as quasi-hotels. How have we ended up with a housing system where some people can own 37 properties and others have absolutely nowhere to live? Airbnb drives up house prices, it locks out first home buyers and it takes away homes from renters.

The Greens’ plan to cap the number of days that a property can be on a platform like Airbnb would force 35 per cent of these property investors – those who have bought up these homes just to make exorbitant profits on Airbnb – to reconsider their choices. Maybe it would be better to rent out this home long term or to sell it to someone who would actually live in it. We have an opportunity in the coming state budget to make 13,000 of those homes currently on Airbnb available right now for people to live in. By contrast, Labor’s holiday levy would at best build 100 apartments a year – just a bandaid on a bullet wound. Regulating Airbnb in this way is not radical. It is actually a very reasonable and normal thing to do. Most major cities around the world have already put in limits on Airbnb. Some have even banned the platform altogether.

Labor is going to need our vote to pass this levy, but the Greens have made it very clear we will not support anything that will see the housing crisis get worse. We are asking Labor: come to the table; work with the Greens on policies that will actually make homes available for people to live in.