I spoke in support of the Greens' bill to freeze rent increases for two years. 

Ms TAMARA SMITH (Ballina) (12:32): I am proud to speak in support of The Greens' Residential Tenancies Amendment (Rent Freeze) Bill 2023. I commend The Greens' housing spokesperson, the member for Newtown, for her work in this space. Rent freezes are not radical. You would think we were talking about something truly radical. It is not radical in Germany, where a three-year rent freeze was recently announced. In 2020 the Victorian Government recognised the housing affordability crisis brought on by the pandemic and froze rents for six months. None of these Chicken Little arguments applied there. A number of other jurisdictions have rent caps in place. In the Australian Capital Territory, where—I am proud to say—The Greens hold the balance of power, the Government has put in a rent cap. The reason those jurisdictions have done so is because we are in an extreme housing crisis.

I said recently that the two existential crises we face are the housing crisis and the climate crisis. My community, sadly, is living through that—as are other communities—on the back of the 2019 Black Summer bushfires and the pandemic, where a mass exodus of thousands of people from the city moved to our region. Unfortunately a lot of those people were then also flood affected. The housing crisis in our area is beyond the pale. I would have thought that this Government would try to pull every single lever. To rule out the idea of a rent freeze seems ideological. While it seems some people are comfortable with the words "rent cap", for some reason the idea of a rent freeze is being demonised. But I can tell members, if they go back to their communities and talk to renters, those people will not be demonising the concept of a rent freeze.

Regarding the spurious argument of supply, I have been in this place for nearly nine years and I am sick to death of hearing this argument, because it lacks any nuance about which houses, who they are for and where they are going. That granularity is essential. To give you an example, my community stridently opposed the development in West Byron, primarily because it is in a flood zone. It is not just a flood zone; it is the Cumbebin Swamp. Unfortunately we did not win that battle. That development was literally touted to our community as the potential for affordable housing. What have we got now? The minimum land value in West Byron is $1.2 million. Nobody I know will be living in West Byron.

If we manage to finally get the 60‑day cap on short-term holiday letting—and we are grateful it has been green‑lit again—we are waiting until September next year. We just cannot wait for these things. At the moment in West Byron there is absolutely no incentive for anyone to offer affordable rent or housing. Unfortunately that supply answer does not address the fact that nobody can afford to live there. In my community, we have the legacy of unfettered, out-of-control holiday letting—it still is today. We have the extra layer that any properties that may be suitable for our frontline workers and families to live in or rent are on online platforms, because landlords can make more money that way. Supply alone does not work.

I am very proud of the work that our spokesperson has done, which is well supported by evidence. According to a recent analysis by Everybody's Home, 82 per cent of renters in New South Wales are living in housing stress. I am surprised that the Government does not see that giving renters some respite would be extraordinarily popular. As a landlord myself, I think landlords should be given an incentive as well. We are not demonising landlords. We know that we would not have rental properties without landlords. However, the scale is tipped the other way and is completely out of balance.

As an example, a couple of weeks ago there were 1,100 applicants for a granny flat in Mullumbimby. That tells you that there is an extraordinary imbalance of power. Everyone in our Northern Rivers community has seen the rental crisis close up. Every day I drive past cafes left closed because our hospitality workers cannot find a single affordable rental in the region. We have all seen construction delayed after the floods. In our region everyone who has kids knows they do not even contemplate buying, or even renting, in the area that they grew up in. They are living with their families.

The Minister for Planning and Public Spaces today talked about intergenerational disadvantage. A rent freeze is an answer. It is a solution. Give it a case study or whatever you want to call it. The idea that we should dismiss it out of hand is absurd. Renters constantly come to me and say that they feel completely powerless. Property investors are entitled to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions and renters cannot even live with a pet, let alone afford the rent in my region, which is comparable to Sydney. As I said, rent freezes are not radical.

I understand that the Government wants to increase the supply of housing and I understand that there need to be targets for supply. But—and I come back to this again and again—who are these houses for? As our spokesperson said this week, the issue with selling off Crown land, public land and common land and somehow gifting 70 per cent of that to developers is absurd. Developers do not need more incentives. We need to provide incentives that will genuinely offer affordable housing with long leases and below market rates. How can we incentivise that?

The only support for renters that the National Cabinet has on offer right now is a 12-month restriction on how often rents can increase. I have been to visit some of the terribly flood-affected residents in my electorate who are living in the pod villages post-floods, and they are doing it tough. They are trying to transition from those pods back into the community. Many of them are displaced from Lismore. They have found themselves on the coast absolutely unable to transition, and that is horrendous. There are 800 people on a waitlist to be in one of those pods. They have nowhere to go. If a person gets kicked out of the pods, they have nowhere to go. They are on the street. Something has to give. We have to do something. I will not wait while we have another housing taskforce. If I have to contribute another submission to a housing taskforce, I am going to scream. The Liberals, Nationals and Labor keep saying the same thing—that supply is the answer, and it absolutely is not. But how is it going for us? It has not worked at all.

Regardless of the outcome today, I encourage all members to contemplate all renters in their electorates. The Greens will continue to campaign on this issue. We have successfully pressured this Government to end no‑grounds evictions in New South Wales and my Federal colleagues have secured an additional $3 billion of immediate spending for affordable housing. Some Federal Labor MPs are saying that The Greens are holding up housing developments, but we got an extra $3 billion. Quite frankly, the money allocated in the State budget for social housing was absolutely pitiful.

Housing is a huge factor to consider as we enter the climate change apocalypse. The Premier should be spending all of his time on those two existential crises. It is a fundamental right for people to have a safe and secure home and to be protected from what is coming down the line. We have just seen more than 70 fires and another drought off the back of floods. I urge Labor to take this seriously and to look for every opportunity to alleviate the housing stress that our community is under.