Greens unveil policy designed to freeze rents at January 2023 levels in battle for Brisbane city council
The Greens say they would introduce an effective rent freeze across Brisbane by enacting massive land rates increases for any property investors who increase the rent.
The announcement on Monday will be a centrepiece of the Greens’ campaign for the Brisbane city council, a city where nearly four in 10 homes are occupied by renters.
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Rain expected to ease over flooded regions in Victoria
The good news is no more rain is expected over flooded regions in Victoria, VicSES deputy chief officer David Baker told ABC News:
The big tap in the sky has been turned off. That’s great news for us. So what we’re dealing with now is what’s currently in the river systems that will need to flush itself through the systems. And we can assess that and we can manage that and put efforts in place to make sure that communities are out of harm’s way. So the good news is no more serious rain expected, and a pretty stable system, I understand, until at least … next week.
We estimate up to 130 properties may be impacted by the event, hence we issued an Emergency warning late yesterday afternoon which was renewed during the early hours of the morning.
It’s mainly homes in that area. Rural homes that may see what we call above floor inundation.
Continue reading...If approved by NSW government, it will apply only to Byron and not other councils struggling amid the state-wide housing shortage
Byron council’s planned 60-day cap on short-term rentals like Airbnbs to ease pressure on the housing market would not come into effect until the middle of next year if the government decides to allow it, the holiday hotspot’s mayor says.
And if the tightened rules are approved by the New South Wales government, they will just apply to Byron and not other councils also struggling with housing amid a state-wide shortage.
Continue reading...Professionals seeking affordable housing are displacing those at risk of homelessness as rents soar
When a boarding house in Sydney’s inner-west was razed by arson last year, taking with it the lives of three residents and leaving eight without homes, the hope was that it would be replaced with a newer, safer version of the same low-cost community housing.
But 12 months is a long time in Sydney’s rampant rental market.
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Continue reading...New report shows housing affordability has reached its lowest levels in decades as market continues to rebound
Rising interest rates and surging home prices have seen Australian housing affordability crash to its lowest levels in decades, according to a new report.
A household earning the median income of $105,000 can now only comfortably afford 13% of homes on the market, the lowest share since the relevant data was first collected in 1995, according to property data company PropTrack.
Continue reading...Housing tussle between Labor and the Greens does not impact PM’s popularity with 37% feeling positive about Anthony Albanese
Three in four Australians believe rents should either be capped to inflation or frozen until economic conditions improve, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.
Presented with choices about rental policies, 44% of the 1,151 respondents supported an annual increase to rents by no more than inflation, while 34% believed rents should be frozen until the economy turns around.
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Home prices to keep rising despite higher rates: REA
National property prices are expected to increase by up to five per cent in 2023, having already lifted more than two per cent since the start of the year, AAP reports.
We saw price increases despite rising interest rates and reduced borrowing capacities and anticipate moderate price increases to continue over the coming months.
Don’t wait for a flare to rise from Canberra, until you get started.
The campaign has truly begun. Get out there, talk to your family, talk to your friends.
This is your moment.
I urge you to campaign for a future you want to see.
We will win this referendum, conversation by conversation. Silence doesn’t make history, people make history.
Continue reading...Minor party plans to door-knock Labor electorates in a ‘national day of action’ as it continues to call on the prime minister to include rent relief in package
The Greens remain defiant in the face of Anthony Albanese’s double-dissolution threat over his housing bill, insisting the minor party will continue to push for rent relief to be part of the package.
Queensland Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather said the party remained willing to negotiate but would not be pushed into supporting Labor’s $5bn housing Australia future fund (Haff).
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Housing bill squabble to bring back possibility of double dissolution election
Parliament resumes next week after a five-week hiatus over winter, which means all the squabbles and fights we left in June are starting to whirl up again – chief among them housing. As Daniel Hurst reported this morning, Labor is going to bring back its housing bill to the house in October, where it will pass. Once it hits the Senate, things get a little more dicey. If it’s rejected by the Greens, who so far aren’t seeing what they want from the government, then the government has a double dissolution trigger.
The early indications are that there was a 50m exclusion zone around the deceased.
All efforts had been made to cover the body but at certain stages of the forensic examination, that body did need to be uncovered so the forensic police could do their work for the coroner and unfortunately, those children did walk past.
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No campaign ‘offers no solutions and no vision’: young Indigenous leaders
The youth declaration urged Australians to educate themselves on the change, claiming “the no campaign offers no solutions and no vision for our young people’s futures, or our families and communities”.
We are excited that our Uluru Youth Dialogue, as the leading and only youth-led campaign, will be at the forefront of this referendum working alongside the senior leaders of the Uluru Dialogue.
These statistics are important. They paint a picture of a media debate that has shut out young people and their voices. Especially the voices of First Nations young people.
It is our future. Young people are crucial to this movement. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, carrying forward the spirit and legacies of warriors before us.
Continue reading...One family is among 13,000 waiting for their application to be processed after nightmare tree change left them with uninhabitable housing
When David*, his partner and young daughter moved to a regional Victorian property close to two-and-a-half years ago, they just wanted a tree-change. What they got was a nightmare rental experience, a hole in their bank account worth more than $20,000, and a prolonged dispute that is still without resolution.
David, who asked that his surname not be used, is just one of nearly 13,000 people waiting for his bond and compensation application to come before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (Vcat), where backlogs still persist and the median wait time is more than nine months.
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Continue reading...Government says new regulations stipulating rents can not be raised more than once a year will be reviewed
Landlords seeking to avoid new Queensland laws limiting rent increases to once a year have left numerous renters worse off, according to the state’s tenants’ rights service
The Palaszczuk government on Thursday said it would review the laws – just two weeks after they took effect – amid reports landlords had evicted tenants in order to get around the regulation.
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Patricia Karvelas challenges Littleproud’s Covid reasoning behind the Murray-Darling Basin delays on ABC RN this morning.
“This isn’t a new problem … Your government was in power when a 2019 Productivity Commission report warned that there had been limited progress returning the water to the environment,” she says. “Why didn’t you change course?”
This is a very technical piece of legislation … The 450 is additional to the 2,750 gigalitres of water in the plan, the Productivity Commission looked at the 450 gigalitres, there’s only been 2 gigalitres recovered on the 450 …
Because the neutrality test on social and economic impact on rural communities have not been passed to get more water back out of it – that’s a test the Labor government put in place, that we adhere to that the states agreed to.
He [is] going down a path that’s divided the country and meant that the attention has been taken away from managing people’s cost-of-living crisis, and focused on trying to win a referendum in which he has overreached in conflating a voice with constitutional recognition.
Continue reading...Median unit in harbour city now costs more than median house in every other capital, Domain says, as immigration adds to rental ‘pressure cooker’
Rents continued to climb across Australia in the June quarter, particularly in the biggest cities, with a median unit costing more to rent in Sydney than a median house in every other state capital, data from Domain showed.
A record migrant intake that will swell the nation’s population by 715,000 people over two years and a return of overseas students and temporary visa holders will add to the “rental pressure cooker”, Domain said in its quarterly report. About 127,000 additional dwellings will be needed this financial year alone.
Continue reading...Advocates say caps or freezes may help reduce pressure on renters but experts warn they are not a simple fix
Renters are bearing the brunt of Australia’s housing crisis, with stories of extortionate rent increases for poor quality homes making headlines all too often.
One solution being flagged by advocates is to control rents, either through freezes or caps on how much landlords can increase the amount.
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PwC should not be banned from government work but should face ‘significant sanction’, Dutton says
Following the damning interim Senate report into PwC, Dutton says he does not believe the consultancy firm should be cut from all government work, but says a penalty needs to be incurred for the breach of trust:
I think where people have breached a contract, they’ve breached trust, there’s a penalty and the price that should be paid. I don’t know whether that’s the company or whether there’s a solution that the government can provide to it but there’s there’s a significant sanction that’s that’s required – no doubt the government will be looking into that right now.
All of the pollsters at the moment, and credible commentators, believe that it’s either going to fail in October or, best case scenario for the yes case, that gets up 51-49. And in that scenario, our nation is split down the middle.
I think there’s an opportunity to unite our country here instead of divide, and that is that we should proceed with constitutional recognition.
Continue reading...Greens urged to back government’s fund as advocates say housing is needed now and politicians need to ‘start taking action’
The Senate has set up an inquiry into the rental crisis, a process designed by the Greens to pressure the Albanese government to agree to freeze or cap rising rents.
On Monday the Greens voted with the Coalition to delay consideration of Labor’s $10bn Housing Australia Future Fund (Haff) until 16 October, despite pressure from housing groups to pass the bill after the government pledged $2bn of direct funding for social and affordable housing.
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Albanese takes swipes at the Greens
The Midwinter Ball was held overnight. It seems to have been a fairly staid affair but I am still ferreting out info.
Consulting firm PwC engaged in a “calculated” breach of trust by using confidential information to help its clients avoid tax and engaged in a “deliberate cover-up” over many years, a Senate committee has found.
PwC should be “open and honest” by promptly publishing the names and details of its partners and staff involved, the finance and public administration committee has recommended.
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Independent Kooyong MP Dr Monique Ryan said the crossbench was distressed by the past week in parliament:
I can speak for other members of the crossbench because we talk to each other after each question time because we found it distressing, and we wanted to stand to our feet and say that we felt it was conduct unbecoming parliament, and I think if we learn nothing from this, we have to decide as a society whether we want our parliament really to be dragging people who have gone through really difficult experiences through that sort of experience again. It wasn’t ideal. It was – I actually felt it was shameful.
I think there were serious questions that needed to be asked in the face of a minister misleading the Senate and we asked questions about who knew what, when, what was done with that information – all very legitimate questions, and this issue, when it was last in parliament was pursued ferociously by the then opposition and I think we were very careful as we could be with our tone, but to also ask legitimate questions of the government and their ministers, not just around who knew what when but also around the swiftness of the compensation payment, why some evidence in that process was explicitly excluded, and that, you know, the substantial nature of it – all legitimate questions and the right thing to do.
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Chalmers to herald record job growth
Treasurer Jim Chalmers will no doubt take a dixer on this today – the Albanese government has “had the strongest job growth in the first year of any new government on record”.
The number of Australians with a job is now more than 14 million for the very first time.
Australia’s participation rate is 66.9% – the highest on record, primarily driven by record high participation for women (62.7%).
The share of women in work is at a record high – with the employment to population ration for women at 60.5%.
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