A Greens MP has criticized Anthony Albanese for the opportunities the Prime Minister received when he was young and which he says are now denied to Australians.
Max Chandler-Mather, who has always been a thorn in the Prime Minister’s side with his criticism of the government’s efforts to address Australia’s chronic housing shortage, launched another scathing attack on the government in parliament this week.
“People are not upset that the Prime Minister had these opportunities, but that a Labor government in a country much richer than in the 1980s is denying those same opportunities today,” Mr Chandler-Mather said.
The 32-year-old MP for the seat of Griffith, south of Brisbane, took particular aim at the short supply of affordable housing and the crushing student debt many Australians are currently facing.
“When the Prime Minister bought his first house in Marrickville, it cost him $146,000 or about five times the average income,” he said.
“A house in Marrickville now costs $2 million, about 20 times the median income.”
Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather, 32, launched a scathing attack on Anthony Albanese for “denying” Australians the affordable housing and educational opportunities he had as a young adult.
Albanese and Chandler-Mather have consistently clashed in parliament over the government’s efforts to address Australia’s housing shortage (pictured: Albanese at the ASEAN meeting this week)
Chandler-Mather argued that when Albanese bought his first home, he didn’t have to compete against real estate investors who “use the capital gains tax discount to drive up the price of the home.”
“Property investors will receive $39 billion in tax relief this year alone from this Labor government,” he said.
‘When the Prime Minister was growing up, governments used to build enough housing so that a worker who needed it could move into a good council house and build a good life.
“There is now a shortage of 700,000 public housing units and people often have to wait 10 years to get one.”
In addition to sky-high housing prices, Chandler-Mather said student debt was another major factor weighing on today’s young adults.
‘When the Prime Minister went to university, he did it for free and graduated without student debt.
‘College students now face huge student debts, often rising faster than they can afford to pay them off.
‘People are angry because it is a Labor government that refuses to scrap student debt and make university free.
‘People are angry because the Labor Party refuses to remove tax relief for property investors, denying millions of renters the opportunity to buy a home.
‘People are angry because the Labor Party refuses to fund mass public housing construction like governments used to do.
“The government should listen right now to people who are frustrated with a group of politicians who had so many good opportunities growing up and are now denying them to others.”
Chandler-Mather has worked to differentiate the Greens from Labor on housing policy in the upcoming federal election.
The couple had previously clashed in parliament over the issue.
The Prime Minister and Brisbane Home MP Griffith previously exchanged a few choice words after Question Time in Parliament last year (pictured).
Chandler-Mather accused the Prime Minister of misquoting him in a speech, while the Prime Minister responded: “You’re a joke, mate,” according to reports.
Chandler-Mather used a National Press Club speech Wednesday to announce a plan to build homes and rent them well below market rates to help renters and first-home buyers.
“All we’re saying is that to control the crazy price gouging and real estate speculation that’s going on in the private real estate market, one of the ways to fix it is to provide a good public housing option,” Chandler-Mather told the ABC radio. National.
“Because for anyone in Australia to have a good life they probably need a few things – one of them is a roof over their head.”
Based on Parliamentary Budget Office costs, the average renter using the Greens program would save $5,200 a year on rent, and the average first-home buyer purchasing one of the homes would save $260,000 compared to average market prices.
Under the plan, the developer would sell the homes for little more than the construction cost to any first-home buyer, while rents would be capped at 25 percent of the household’s income.
Thirty per cent of homes would be available for purchase and the other 70 per cent would be dedicated to renting, under the Greens’ plan, with 20 per cent of the rental stock dedicated to the bottom 20 per cent of homeowners.
Properties purchased by first-home buyers could only be resold to the government at cost price plus CPI.
Chandler-Mather said construction activity in Australia had hit “decade lows” as rising interest rates drove up the cost of finance for property developers.
“That way we can get those construction workers back to work and give the construction industry some much-needed stability,” he said.
According to Chandler-Mather, Australians who already own a home on the private property market will not be able to access the scheme and eligibility criteria will not be based on how much a person earns.
Property Council of Australia chief executive Mike Zorbas and Greens MP for Griffith Max Chandler-Mather at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.
Chandler-Mather has been scathing of the Labor government over its housing policies, including rental assistance, on social media, racking up millions of views.
He said priority would be given to people with connections to local areas, such as where they work, and to people of First Nations descent.
‘For decades, the government has left the supply of housing to private developers, and they have failed catastrophically, making massive profits while driving up the cost of housing by deliberately restricting supply, occupying vacant houses and blocks of land approved for development.
“Normally, a private developer makes huge profits, but the public developer would put those profits back into the pockets of tenants and first-home buyers in the form of lower house prices and rents.”
Based on cost calculations, the underlying cost to the budget over the decade would be $27.9 billion.
Comparatively, this year alone the federal government spent $27 billion on rent deductions for real estate investors.
The Greens already hold the balance of power in the Senate and, after winning two more seats in the House of Representatives in the 2022 elections, believe they have a chance of pushing Labor into a minority government in the next election, scheduled for May. 2025.
The announcement comes as the Greens and Labor remain locked in a war over the government’s Help to Buy scheme, which would give 40,000 first-home buyers over four years the chance to co-buy a home with the government.
The Greens say the plan is an unfair “lottery” that will drive up house prices – a point disputed by economists and the government – and want the government to instead reduce negative gearing and remove tax concessions to capital gains.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has indicated the government will not have to pay blackmail for its last major piece of housing policy before the next election.