Month: August 2022

Today we announce that the Government has appointed the Hon Virginia Bell AC to lead an Inquiry into the appointment of former Prime Minister, the Hon Scott Morrison MP, to administer departments other than the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and related matters. 

The Solicitor General found that the principles of responsible government were fundamentally undermined by the actions of the former Morrison Government. The Government is holding the Inquiry to restore and strengthen public trust in our Australian democracy.

The Inquiry will examine and report on the facts and circumstances surrounding Mr Morrison’s appointments to five departments during 2020 and 2021 and the implications arising from them.

It will also examine and report on the practices and policies which apply to ministerial appointments and recommend any procedural or legislative changes which would provide greater transparency and accountability.

Ms Bell is eminently qualified to lead the Inquiry, having served on the High Court of Australia for 12 years, and before that, an extensive legal career including as judge of the NSW Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of NSW.

The Government expects those with knowledge of these events to willingly assist and provide information to the inquiry.

The Terms of Reference for the Inquiry are now available.

Ms Bell will report to the Prime Minister by Friday 25 November 2022.

While we wait for a national housing plan, inflation threatens to squeeze more households out of their homes and onto the streets.

Households are feeling the pinch from the rising cost of living. But while the price of electricity, groceries and petrol are causing concerns, perhaps the most significant rising cost is housing.

Dr Andrew Clarke from the School of Social Sciences, UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture, says more low-income households are at risk of becoming homeless as they find themselves priced out of an increasingly competitive private rental market.

“Internal migration to regional areas during the pandemic has seen low vacancy rates and skyrocketing asking prices in the private rental market there. Meanwhile, stagnant levels of affordable housing development in capital cities have failed to keep up with population growth, let alone rising need,” Dr Clarke says.

The new federal government has recently committed to developing a national plan to address housing insecurity and homelessness. But while an encouraging signal of intent, its value will ultimately depend on how much emphasis it places on new investment in social and affordable housing.

“We’ve seen lots of practice innovations in the homelessness sector over the last decade. However, without any real increase in the supply of social housing, these have not been able to make much of an impact,” Dr Clarke says. “The new plan can’t just be about changing up how homelessness services operate. It has to provide a housing-centred solution to the worsening housing crisis.”

In the meantime, there is plenty governments can do to help vulnerable people affected by rising rents and other necessities whilst the plan is being developed.

“The pandemic had a unique set of circumstances where governments used empty hotels and student facilities to accommodate homeless people in a public health emergency. But what that showed is that we can move quickly on the issue if we choose,” Dr Clarke says.

Homelessness amidst rising living costs

At the 2016 Census, there were 116,000 people who reported they were homeless – a 14 per cent increase from the previous Census. Dr Clarke suggests those figures would be a conservative estimate today, given current economic conditions and that homelessness data is challenging to gather at the best of times.

“We don’t have great data to measure the scale of homelessness in Australia as it’s hard to compile,” Dr Clarke says. “But we would expect to see that upward trajectory continue when we get the 2021 Census data, given the housing market impacts of the pandemic.”

Dr Clarke says service providers are reporting more people finding themselves homeless for the first time, like people working low-paid jobs.

“We’re hearing from social services providers that new cohorts that don’t typically experience homelessness at the same scale are finding themselves unable to secure or sustain housing,” he says.

The largest group affected by rising living costs are those on fixed incomes, such as government support payments, many of which are below the poverty line, according to Dr Clarke.

“Payments are fixed and indexed at a rate far below what you need to survive even before this inflationary moment. Despite the recent small increase in the JobSeeker Payment, people on those incomes will struggle the most in the context of rising living costs.”

Addressing homelessness in the interim

During the pandemic, there were unprecedented support measures for homeless people or those at risk of homelessness, including temporary eviction moratoriums, increases in government support payments and large-scale transitional accommodation initiatives, like NSW’s Together Home program. Dr Clarke says we need to revisit similar measures or risk more households slipping into homelessness.

“Government could re-engage and expand some of those programs for those people currently impacted by rising rents and other basic living costs,” Dr Clarke says.

Longer term, the lack of social housing remains a significant barrier to addressing homelessness at scale. But transitional head-leasing – where governments fund homelessness service providers to sublease a property from the private rental market to households – could be a temporary solution.

“It wouldn’t solve the shortage of social housing in the long-term, but as a transitional solution, it could be viable,” Dr Clarke says.

An immediate increase in unemployment benefits would also help to ease the cost-of-living pressures in the interim for households at risk of homelessness, Dr Clarke says.

“Research continually shows how inadequate those payments are and their impact on people, undermining their ability to meet rent and forcing them to rely on charity to meet basic needs.

“It’s important to recognise that if we hope to address other social issues, it has to start with everyone having a safe, secure and affordable place to live.”

With the upcoming Jobs Summit and recent Everybody’s Home research detailing the impact the rental crisis is having on the broader economy, Max Chandler-Mather MP, Greens spokesperson for Housing and Homelessness, has today called on Federal government to introduce a nationwide two-year rent freeze.

Under the Greens’ plan, National Cabinet would agree on national tenancy standards that include a 2 year emergency rent freeze. This would be followed by ongoing rent caps and an end to no grounds evictions, minimum standards for rental properties and tenant rights to make minor improvements to the home.

Following the 2 year rent freeze, rents would be capped at 2% increases every 24 months. Based on wages and rents at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, this would see wages catch back up with rents by 2029.

The Greens call comes as Australia has seen the biggest rent increases in 14 years, putting millions of Australians into severe rental stress and exacerbating regional labour shortages because workers are being priced out of local rental markets.

Max Chandler-Mather MP, Greens spokesperson for Housing and Homelessness said:

“An emergency rent freeze  will give wages and incomes time to catch up to rents, which over the last 12 months have grown seven times faster than wages in capital cities.

“With more and more people renting long term, we desperately need legislated protections against unfair, arbitrary evictions and skyrocketing rents.”

“As the Everybody’s Home report detailed yesterday, the rental affordability crisis is destroying regional communities and impacting the broader economy. A rent freeze will help those communities rebuild, tackle the skills shortage and protect livelihoods.” 

“If the government is serious about cost of living relief, if they’re serious about affordable housing, then it’s a no-brainer to freeze rent rises.

“Rents are out of control, millions of Australian renters are struggling to pay the rent, and unless the Government wants to see more families sleeping in their cars they need to do their job and act now to stop this crisis boiling over into a national tragedy.

“During the pandemic the Victorian Government froze rents, while governments around the world have used rent freezes and controls successfully to protect households and their homes, there’s no reason why we can’t do it here.

“Just as the Government coordinated a national response to the COVID19 health crisis, the Federal Government should intervene to coordinate an emergency nationwide response to the housing crisis that includes a rent freeze.

“We’ve got families sleeping in their cars, workers unable to afford a home near where they work, people being evicted from their homes because they can’t afford 20% rent increases and the governments just sitting on their hands when they have the capacity to intervene and stop the worst of this crisis.”

Background

Renters across Australia are facing annual rent increases of 17.9% in capital cities and 13.4% nationwide. 2.7 million Australians are in rental stress with over 1 million in severe rental stress. In the past 12 months rents in capital cities have grown seven times faster than wages.

Since mid-2020 rents have been spiking, growing many times faster than wages. Even under the Greens plan to freeze rents for two years, then cap rent increases at 2% every 2 years, wage growth won’t make up for the impacts of recent rent growth until 2029.

History of rent freezes

Rent-freezes have a long history of use in times of rampant inflation. In Australia, rents were frozen by the Commonwealth government in 1941 to deal with inflation caused by wartime shortages. Most recently, the Victorian government froze rents for six months during the COVID-19 crisis, and Cherbourg implemented a rent freeze to deal with a mass influx of former residents returning home searching for affordable and culturally-appropriate housing. Internationally, rent freezes. Internationally, rent controls are in place in designated ‘rent pressure zones’ in Scotland, in British Columbia and New York. Recently, London mayor Sadiq Khan has called to be granted powers to freeze private rents for two years, and the New Zealand Human Rights Commission called for a temporary rent freeze to tackle a similar cost of living and rent crisis in New Zealand. 

Greens Leader Adam Bandt says Labor’s Stage 3 tax cuts for billionaires and the wealthy must be on the agenda at the Jobs and Skills Summit, just as taxation policy was on the agenda at Bob Hawke’s national summit.

Responding to the release of the summit’s Issues Paper, Mr Bandt said trying to have a discussion about the nation’s economic challenges without mentioning the revenue hole caused by Labor’s Stage 3 tax cuts just didn’t make sense.

Bob Hawke’s summit sought “to seek broad agreement on the relationship between a successful prices and incomes policy and the implementation of policies on industrial relations, job creation and training, taxation, social security, health, education, and the other major community services”.

Mr Bandt said:

“It seems reversing Stage Three tax cuts is on everyone’s lips except the Treasurer’s.”

“The Jobs Summit Issues Paper doesn’t use the word tax once.”

“At this summit, Labor’s giant Stage 3 tax cuts for billionaires and the wealthy will be the elephant in the room and the Treasurer will need stage curtains to hide it.”

“Bob Hawke understood that you can’t discuss workers’ wellbeing without discussing taxation.”

“We can’t talk about tackling the wages and skills crisis without talking about the income inequality and restriction on government spending that the unfair Stage 3 tax cuts will cause.”

“Labor is spending $224b on Stage 3 tax cuts to the wealthy, but that amount of money could deliver immediate cost of living relief and make workers’ lives better by making childcare free, getting dental into Medicare and helping build 1 million affordable homes instead.”

“The Greens will attend the government’s Jobs Summit to gain support for our plans to stop the Stage 3 tax cuts and invest in services instead to make people’s lives better.”

The Greens are calling for a forward-looking Robodebt Royal Commission, and for the Labor Government to address structural factors in our country’s social security system to ensure a callous debt-collection scheme like Robodebt never happens again. 

Greens social services spokesperson, Senator Janet Rice, said:

“The Greens have been fighting against Robodebt since it started, and Greens Senators chaired the Senate inquiry that highlighted how far this injustice went. We are pleased the Labor government is acting on this promise for a Royal Commission. I look forward to working constructively with Ministers Shorten and Rishworth to uncover the truth about how this scheme came to be, and hold those responsible to account. 

“It’s important, however, that the Royal Commission also examine the structural factors that continue to exist in our broken social security system. We need the royal commission to inform how we fix the system, rather than it simply be an opportunity for the Labor Government to attack the former government. 

“The Royal Commission must provide support for community members and those affected by Robodebt to fully participate to make sure that people on income support are never targeted in this way again. 

“The Greens want to see the Royal Commission examine protections for whistleblowers in the public service, broader debt-collection issues beyond a retrospective look at Robodebt, including third-party debt-collection, and the role of automation in our social security system. 

“It’s also worth noting that the new Labor government has questions to answer on its own current algorithm mess – Workforce Australia – and the problems and stress this automation is causing to thousands of people on income support.”

Public confidence in Australia’s environment laws has been undermined by disturbing reports of Tasmanian and federal bureaucrats politicising science surrounding the tragic decline of the swift parrot.

Greens Senator for lutruwita/Tasmania, Peter Whish-Wilson said: 

“Reports that Tasmanian and federal bureaucrats appear to have taken actions to politicise the science surrounding the sad decline of swift parrots are a shocking betrayal of public trust in our governments. 

“If it is true that Tasmanian bureaucrats tried to influence a report at the request of the logging industry or a captured state government, it’s just another example of why you can’t trust the states to manage national matters of environmental significance.

“Tanya Plibersek’s critical and timely review of our failed federal environment laws must lead to reforms that prevent short term vested interests from putting more species at risk. 

“Downplaying threats to the swift parrot’s recovery plan because they are politically inconvenient is not only immoral but totally undermines the public’s confidence in laws designed to stop species being pushed to the brink of extinction. 

“It’s little wonder people are taking matters into their own hands and resorting to protests and direct action. 

“I urge the Albanese Government to support an end to native forest logging in Tasmania – like we’ve seen in WA and Victoria. It’s the right thing to do for the climate and biodiversity restoration, and it’s what is needed to protect critically endangered species like the swift parrot.”