Posted on Saturday, 1 February
Victorian Socialists today announced its updated housing policy for the 2025 federal election. You can download a PDF version of the policy here.
Australia’s housing system is broken, and our parliament of landlords won’t fix it.
Since coming to power in 2022 Labor has done nothing to address the inhuman irrationality of a housing system that funnels wealth from the least well off people in society to the wealthiest, and consigns increasing numbers to extreme housing insecurity or homelessness.
The Australian Homeless Monitor 2024 report found that there had been a 22 percent increase in the number of people sleeping rough in Australia in the three years to 2023-24. Homelessness support services can’t keep up with demand, and waiting lists for social housing are growing rapidly.
Even among those who can find a place to live, many are struggling. Rents are soaring and working-class home buyers are being crushed by high interest rates - while landlords and banks are enjoying a profit windfall.
Every year, the gap between the housing ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ widens. If left unaddressed this deepening inequality will have repercussions across all aspects of society for many years to come.
A parliament of landlords won’t drive the change we need
Around 44 percent of sitting MPs own one or more investment properties, compared to just 15 percent of the wider population. As reported by Crikey in 2022, the 227 federal members of parliament own 510 properties between them—an average of 2.25 properties per MP. There are more MPs who own three or more properties (84) than there are who own one or fewer (83).
A parliament of landlords with a base salary of more than $200,000 can’t be trusted to represent the interests of renters and others in housing stress. That’s one reason why the Victorian Socialists executive recently adopted a new set of rules to disqualify landlords who collect ongoing rent payments on investment properties apart from their primary residence from seeking preselection with the party.
Our vision
Victorian Socialists believe secure, quality housing should be a right, not a money-making opportunity for the rich. We want to build a society in which no-one has to struggle just to find a place to live. A society that prioritises spending hundreds of billions on submarines, tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, and subsidies for fossil fuel companies and property investors over housing and other basic human needs is a society that has failed.
We think:
- Access to secure, quality housing is a fundamental social right.
- Homelessness and housing insecurity is a result of a competitive, market driven society, organised around private ownership of residential property.
- Housing should not be a means by which some people amass wealth at the expense of others.
We'll fight to:
- Tackle homelessness and the housing shortfall by providing commonwealth funding for quality, carbon-neutral public housing, with the goal of building one million new public housing units over the next decade.
- Establish a public builder to undertake the construction of these one million new homes.
- Impose a five-year freeze on rent increases and cap subsequent increases at whichever is lower, at the time, out of the Consumer Price Index and the Wage Price Index.
- Scrap negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount for all investment properties.
- Establish a National Rental Inspectorate tasked with developing and enforcing a set of legally binding minimum rental standards covering amenity, safety, energy efficiency, and thermal comfort.
- Implement a new system of mandatory ‘rentworthy checks’, administered by the National Rental Inspectorate, to be completed each time a property is advertised for rent and once every two years in between.
- Conduct an annual housing audit to identify properties left vacant. Properties found to have been left empty for 12 months without a valid reason will be seized and allocated to people on the public housing waiting list.
- Introduce a new national planning framework with mandatory ‘inclusionary zoning’ so that in all Australian states and territories developers will be compelled to include a minimum of 30 percent public housing in all major new developments.