Two housing bills are set to be voted on during the final sitting week of the year, but without a deal in place, they are expected to be blocked unless the Greens or Coalition change their positions. This follows the government rejecting the latest offer from the Greens to reach a compromise on the legislation. Political reporter Evelyn Manfield has more.
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00:00What will happen is the government will bring on a vote in the Senate for these two key
00:07housing bills.
00:08So they include the Help to Buy, which is a shared equity scheme, and the Build to Rent,
00:12which would see incentives for developers to ensure that they're building enough affordable
00:17rentals.
00:18But what's going to happen is they'll bring on this vote without having the support yet
00:23of the Coalition, and in particular, the Greens.
00:25So the Greens say that they have been negotiating with the government on this, recently writing
00:31a letter to the Housing Minister, Claire O'Neill, and scaling back what they were calling for
00:36earlier, which included things like a rent cap and changes to negative gearing as well.
00:42What this new proposal entailed was 25,000 new social and affordable homes under the
00:48Housing Australia Future Fund, so a separate piece of legislation.
00:53So they wanted to see the changes there for projects that hadn't won money initially under
00:58the Housing Australia Future Fund.
01:01In response, the Housing Minister, Claire O'Neill, says the reason that those projects
01:05didn't get funding is for a couple of reasons.
01:07One, they were bad value for money, and two, she says, they would have been built anyway
01:12without government support.
01:14She's also said that the Greens' proposal would have raised legal issues because it would
01:19have required the Minister to provide this quite clear direction, which she said could
01:24have been unlawful.
01:25This is her speaking on News Breakfast this morning.
01:29It's time to stop playing games.
01:30We've got an opportunity here to do two big and important things that are part of the
01:34puzzle of addressing the housing needs of Australians, and the Parliament needs to come
01:38together and vote them into law.
01:41So when we spoke to Minister Claire O'Neill this morning, asking her if there would be
01:45further negotiations with the Greens, she shut that down, saying that the time for negotiations
01:50is over.
01:51That was six months ago.
01:53So now the big question is, what will the Greens do in the Senate?
01:56This is the Leader, Adam Bandt.
01:59We'll have a look now at what to do about the legislation when it comes up tomorrow.
02:05But what's clear is that Labor has given up on the millions of renters who are struggling
02:10with soaring rent increases.
02:13What this will do is become an optics problem, really, for the Greens if they do vote this
02:17down, because it'll give the Government that ammunition to be able to go to a federal election
02:22campaign and say that the Greens voted against these housing bills.
02:27So this is all unfolding on the last sitting week of this parliamentary year so far, Gemma.
02:34So it'll be one to watch with what happens to these big housing bills.
02:37Political reporter Evelyn Manfield, thank you.