Why the Greens want to freeze house prices

Published Jul 23, 2024, 3:00 PM

The Greens want to get more young people into the housing market, but at what cost?       

Find out more about The Front podcast here. You can read about this story and more on The Australian's website or on The Australian’s app.

This episode of The Front is presented by Claire Harvey, produced by Stephanie Coombes and edited by Josh Burton. The multimedia editor is Lia Tsamoglou and original music is composed by Jasper Leak.

You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Wednesday, July twenty four. The Muslim Vote campaign that's seeking to win seats in Federal Parliament is an insult to Islam, according to radical preachers and the extremist organization his Boot to Rear. Some of the country's most outspoken preachers have attacked the Muslim Vote for supporting deradicalization and say they want Sharia law in Australia. This winter's power bills are going to hurt, as the Energy Market Operator reveals the wholesale cost of producing power those more than twenty percent on last year. The spike was driven by record electricity demand in June's cold snap, a spade of coal power outages and low wind which meant wind power generation hit its lowest level in seven years. That story is live now at Beaustralian dot com dot U. The Greens want to freeze house prices, kill off colon gas, cancel the nuclear submarine deal and blow up our alliance with the United States. Today we dig into the policies driving a very ambitious minor party. Fifteen years ago, in most Australian cities you could buy a two or three bedroom home for around five hundred grand, within reach of schools and public transport. Today you need more than a million dollars. In Sydney the median house price is over one point sixty two million. It's the burning issue of our time, truly enraging for basically everybody under the age of forty, and the loudest voice on the issue the Greens.

If Labour thinks that it's easy to get a head right now and that somehow a first home or even renting is in the reach of everyday people, then they are delusional.

There used to be that we could say to young people in this country, if you study hard and if you work hard, you can lead a good life.

The first home buy is The income required to buy an average home in a capital city in Australia is now one hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars. That is more than double the median national salary, more than double a new teacher or nurse's salary.

The Greens plan is for house prices to stay where they are, and they're upfront about that objective.

That's Joe Kelly, The Australian's National Affairs editor. He's been part of a big series The Australian's been running about what the Greens actually want.

And they're quite open about saying that because their target audience for this policy is young people.

They were and the name is a giveaway an environmental party, Now not so much.

I don't think you can simply dismiss the Greens as of the friendly, tree hugging type of party that maybe a lot of people used to think of them as. I think they're a broader political party now and potentially they're going to be a lot more relevant, particularly if we fall into a minority parliament at the next election. Some of their policies are very radical. In the foreign policy space, I don't think that's an area lots of people would have paid much attention to. But the Greens want to review the ANSAs Alliance, they want to cancel the Orcus Arrangement, they want to slash defense spending and when you speak to them, they're quite frank about suggesting that the larger threat to Australia is really the US, not China. It's the relationship with the US that's likely to draw us into a conflict. On the economy, they're talking about the government intervening to completely override the Reserve Bank decision if the Reserve Bank hikes in August, and on some of these issues they want to push pretty hard and use their influence in a minority government situation.

These are big ambitions for a party that only has a handful of seats in federal Parliament. So do the Greens want to govern?

This is a really interesting question at the moment. The Green's political objective is not to wield the reigns of executive power. Adam Banton that made that very clear when I spoke to him. He wants to just continue this march through both houses, increase the number of lower House seats. And his argument is that the Greens ultimately will replace Labor as that authentic party of the sem To left. And so he's arguing that we're going to out labor labor to some extent, We're going to be better at strengthening the social safety net, We're going to be better at tackling economic inequality, We're going to be better at foreign policy independence. So I don't think their goal is to get Greens into cabinet, at least not anytime soon. It's simply to try and erode that labor vote, increase the number of MPs in Parliament, but particularly the lower House. So they've got four MPs in the lower House. Now across both houses they have fifteen MPs. It was sixteen but Lydia thoughte quit and if you look at the Nationals, I think the Nationals have about twenty one, so they are starting to become more influential as a third force in Australian politics.

Should Labor be worried about the.

Greens, Yes, yes, no. Labour should definitely be worried about the Greens. So the labor primary vote at the last election, by memory, was about thirty two six percent, which is an incredibly low primary vote. The Greens are targeting a whole range of labor seats, mostly labor seats, at the next election, not just in the inner cities, but mostly in the inner cities. I think labor MPs are vulnerable and I think there is a question of what happens once senior labor figures such as Tanya Plibisec such as Anthony Albanesi go on to leave the party. So the Greens pose a threat to Labor on the left flank. But really the goal for Labor has to be to ensure that it has a centrist policy position so that it can hold government and win over people who might occasionally be wanting to vote for the coalition. So it's got to manage those competing political imperatives.

The issue that's getting the Greens a huge amount of attention right now is Gaza. They're involved in the movie that's seen huge rallies on city streets every weekend, and they've been loud and proud declaring Australia should be doing more to influence the behavior of our longtime ally Israel.

The best time to stop this horrific invasion was eight months ago, but the next best time is now. There is a reason other countries around the world right now today are shifting their position to recognize the state of Palestine. Australia should join them.

Recognition of Palestine is something Labor has grappled with for generations, but now in government, Labor is trying to walk a narrow line supporting Israel as an ally condemning the October seven attacks by hamas a terrorist organization and urging Israel to be restrained in its attacks on Gaza. That's made life tough for some Labor MPs, including Afghan Born's Senator Fatima Payman. She voted with the Greens on a motion recognizing Palestine, and then she accused Labor of punishing and ostracizing her for her views. She's now left the party to sit on the cross bench. The Greens say there are no two sides to this conflict, now entering its ninth decade. They say Israel is bad. The policy on Gaza is hardcore, isn't it, Joe. It's not one that they could hold if they were actually in government.

Well, I think the problem with the Green's position on Gaza is I think that they're saying things which are very questionable. They're holding or the accusation against Labor is that Australia is complicit in a genocide. This is the Green's position that Australia is complicit in a genocide happening in the Middle East. Now, I think that's a proposition that most Australians wouldn't accept. I don't think that's correct. I think it's an inflammatory mischaracterization of what's happening, and Labor and the Liberal Party have turned on the Greens for making those sorts of statements, and they've gone a step further and said that they're fueling their sense of division and social unrest. So that's now a level of criticism and scrutiny the Greens are getting that perhaps they wouldn't have had ten years ago. This is a foreign policy position now and they were condemned in the Parliament over it.

Coming up how the Greens killed off Labour's emissions trading scheme and what they say about climate now. This series on the Greens is a ball terrer, just ripping exclusives day after day, including Jewish Greens members saying they feel betrayed by the movement they once believed in. You can check out the series right now at the Australian dot com you we'll be back after this break. You might expect the greatest divide in politics to be left versus right, progressives versus conservatives. In fact, in Australian politics, the most bitter enmity is Labor versus the Greens. Perhaps their most damaging policy clash dates back to two thousand and nine, the year the Greens killed Labour's carbon pollution reduction scheme and helped kill off Kevin Rudd temporarily, at least at the time, Rudd was Prime Minister for the first time, and it swept a power on a wave of emotion about, among other things, what Rud called the greatest moral challenge of our time for.

Our long term future.

There is no more important difference between mister Howard and myself than on climate change.

Krod's solution was an emissions trading scheme to limit greenhouse gas pollution. It was wildly controversial. Environmentalists said it wasn't tough enough, business said it would kill off industry. Green's leader at the time, Bob Brown, ran an aggressive ad campaign gooda Australia.

Here's what's happening. Kevin Rudd wants us to pass a bill which would give pollutas billions of dollars and sets targets way too low to stop climate change. He's locking in failure. He wants you to believe that the only choice is between his bill and no bill at all. That's buncom I'm asking Australians to stand with the Greens right now.

Brown and the Greens voted it down in the Senate twice, and Labor admitted defeat, shelving the bill in twenty ten to avoid going to a double dissolution election. Labour people still see that the Greens sacrificed a pretty good idea because it wasn't perfect. The Greens were criticized for being too pure. That's changed, or has it.

I don't know if it has. That's really my benchmark on whether the Greens are a more mature, evolved party, whether they're prepared to actually vote for incremental change rather than trying to get the Hail Mary utopia vision in one go. We all know that that's not possible, and that's what protest parties are all about. They're about saying none of this is good enough, our policies are where we should be, and we should achieve it all in one swoop. Well, that's just not how progress works. And I think too many of the Greens policies are still too extreme, particularly on climate. So their climate policy is to reach net zero by twenty thirty five for a seventy five percent reduction by twenty thirty They want to phase out of coal completely, including coal exports by the end of decade. So I think the question for them is the extent to which they're prepared to compromise to get better outcomes without being wreckers in the hopes of realizing some futile utopia. And I don't think the Greens are quite there yet because, as I said at the start, they're just aiming for small demographics. They're not really backing a policy platform that's going to appeal broadly, I think, to all Australians.

Joe Kelly is The Australian's National Affairs edited up. There are more thrills and spills in US politics, and now the heat's on the Secret Service boss, with bipartisan calls for her to go after the near assassination of Donald Trump. Join our subscribers to ensure you never miss a thing at the Australian dot com AU

In 1 playlist(s)

  1. The Front

    811 clip(s)

The Front

The Front brings the unrivalled journalism of Australia’s national broadsheet to audio, featuring ea 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 806 clip(s)