Tuesday, 15 August 2023

Rental support

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (14:21): My question is to the Premier. Recent reports show that 82 per cent of renters across Australia are experiencing rental stress. National cabinet is meeting tomorrow to discuss the housing crisis. There are reports today that Labor are pushing for a policy of allowing landlords increased rents once every 12 months, but this means renters still can face unlimited rent increases every single year. Will the Premier take a strong policy to national cabinet tomorrow to put a cap on rents to ban unlimited rent increases?

Daniel ANDREWS (Mulgrave – Premier) (14:22): I thank the member for Melbourne for her question. I am not sure whether she has structured the question to avoid using the term ‘rent capping’, because that is what she is asking for.

Ellen Sandell: I said that. I said ‘rent capping’.

Daniel ANDREWS: Well, okay. Will I take to Brisbane – will I go to the national cabinet and advocate the law of this state, which is one increase per year? That is in the Residential Tenancies Act 1997, one of 130 amendments from this party that apparently has done nothing for renters. The Big Housing Build is not something the Leader of the Opposition would know anything about. The Big Housing Build, together with 130 amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act – that is what we have done – and there is a housing statement coming very soon. We will do more, as any good government would. So will I advocate the Victorian position? No, I am not being asked to do that. I am not being asked to advocate the law of our state to other states. I am being asked to – I am not quite sure what I am being asked to do. I am being asked to do something that might potentially –

Members interjecting.

Daniel ANDREWS: Okay. We should cap rents – is that what we are saying? What they are today – they cannot go up ever again.

Ellen Sandell interjected.

Daniel ANDREWS: Well, what are you putting forward? You see, this is the problem: ‘I’d like you to go to national cabinet. I don’t know what I’d like you to do but when you go there, can you quote me.’ This is the problem with people who do not want the fix, they just want the fight. If I said, ‘Let’s have a rent cap,’ you would say, ‘No, let’s have a rent freeze.’ If I said, ‘Let’s have a rent freeze,’ you would say, ‘Let’s have everybody live for free.’ It would not matter. Or there would not be enough bedrooms. Whatever the government did, the Greens political party would want us to do more, and they would have no regard – as they have I think very little regard – in relation to this proposition. They have very little regard for what the consequences of such action might be.

I simply say this: you want to be very careful. And that is the approach of this government, particularly when it comes to intervening in markets. You need to be very, very careful that you do not have precisely the outcome that you claim to be trying to avoid: more people under more stress because there is less housing supply, not more; people exiting the market; projects that have got planning approval but are not yet commenced not being commenced; or, in the event that you had arrangements that were so variable from other parts of the country, that capital, which for argument’s sake – because market economics is not necessarily really the strength of those opposite – capital can move, investments can be made somewhere else and people can get away projects in other capital cities. You would want to think through whether what you were proposing was going to make things better, things worse or leave them the same. There is no analysis in this question, none whatsoever.

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (14:25): The Premier says he is not sure what he is being asked to do. He seems a little confused, so I would be very happy to explain in my supplementary. Victoria already has a law which limits rent increases to once a year, and yet even with that law rents have gone up in Melbourne over 14 per cent in the last year alone. So it is clear that just limiting when rent increases can happen is not enough. We actually need to limit how much they can be increased by with a cap – a cap on rent increases. That is what we are asking for. So will the Premier push for this at national cabinet tomorrow to help the 82 per cent of renters across Australia who are in severe stress right now?

Daniel ANDREWS (Mulgrave – Premier) (14:26): A couple of points in answer to the member for Melbourne: what does the member for Melbourne say that does to housing supply? What does that do to the renters she claims to be supportive of? Either you do not know or you will not say or you have not bothered to ask. Before you made a change of that nature you would want to be confident that you had done the analysis to ensure that it did not –

Ellen Sandell interjected.

Daniel ANDREWS: Well, you are putting forward a proposition, member for Melbourne, and you do not know what it does. But it sounds good. And again, you do not want the fix, you just want the fight. You just want to pretend to be the solution. You just want to be an endless critic sitting on the sidelines in the cheap seats. I tell you, with the greatest of respect to the member for Melbourne, I could take these policy debates from the Greens much more seriously if they had built more housing than they blocked, and the case is they have not – they have blocked more than they have built. I was down in Prahan today – 620 people are living in those new homes, and the Greens opposed every one of them.

The SPEAKER: Order! I ask members not to refer to ‘you’ in their commentary in the house. It is a reflection on the Chair.