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Max Chandler-Mathers on housing: Labor refused to negotiate then told media the Greens were blocking their bills
Asked about criticism that the Greens slowed down progress on housing on Triple J Hack, Max Chandler-Mather said Anthony Albanese was “basically saying that, and it just wasn’t true, but then the media repeated as fact”.
It was odd for me, I have to say, because I would be sitting in a negotiating room with the prime minister or with the housing minister, and we’d be privately saying we’re willing to give up everything on our side of negotiations if you just build a bit more public housing. And then they say, ‘Nah, no way, we’re not giving you a thing’. And then they go out into the media and say, ‘The Greens are blocking housing’.
In the house, a lot of those things didn’t get across that you were hoping or that you were promising, the rent freezes, the rent caps, the negative gearing changes, the doubling of capital gains tax … That stuff didn’t get across the line, but Labor’s housing policies still did.
I’ll be honest, one of the things I’m quite happy about at the moment is I don’t have to spend more time in the House of Representatives, because, like, basically every time I stood up, I got screamed and yelled at. In terms of a workplace, it was bloody awful, and frankly, a lot of the times miserable.
The only reason I kept going back because it felt like we were one of the few voices fighting for millions of people who feel really let down by this political system …
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