The job description of the progressive right wing of Australian politics is to pretend to care about the fallout for workers from its own corporate policies.
The most nauseating silo in this vertical market is The Guardian/Greens integration:
The Albanese government should pay the states $16bn more for affordable housing in return for a promise to freeze all residential rents for two years, Adam Bandt says.
On Wednesday, the Greens leader will present a plan to save $4.7bn over 10 years by ending tax breaks for property investors to reinvest in affordable housing and double rent assistance.
In a speech to the National Press Club, Bandt will argue that a rent freeze is “both legally and politically possible”, rejecting claims by Anthony Albanese that the idea is “absolute pixie dust” because housing policy is largely controlled by the states.
It’s not pixie dust. It’s napalm. What happens after two years when The Greens’ lunatic mass immigration program has delivered another one million new Australians and almost no new houses owing to the rent freeze and rising building costs?
Bearing in mind that The Greens only supply-side remedy is to build 22.5k public houses per year.
The Greens are also some of the worst NIMBYs at the local level. Check out housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather, protesting against in-fill development in his low-density Brisbane electorate:
NIMBY Max Chandler-Mather opposes more housing stock in his suburb.
Rents will explode at speeds that will not only recover lost revenues but add an adjustment premium for a considerably larger rental housing shortage.
You can also expect landlords to immediately stop spending on maintenance so the rental housing stock will degrade all the while.
So, the Greens’ plan for Aussie renters is to ruin the environment, derail the decarbonisation program, deplete national water resources, crush load public services, and deliver a Chornobyl scale rental price shock in a housing stock of rapidly deteriorating quality.
I know it’s not really part of the makeup of the progressive right of Australian politics to do real-world economics, but can it at least refrain from making worse every single problem it purports to care about?
