The Greens ring in the new year with a new fight over Australia’s housing crisis

Adam Bandt signals new rent freeze push and criticises ‘tax cuts for billionaires’ as Labor aims to get ‘help to buy’ scheme through parliament

New year, new housing fight.

The Labor government may have started the year keen to talk cost-of-living relief and housing solutions, but the Greens have entered 2024 vowing to push the Albanese government to make actual change.

Top of the agenda is Labor’s “help to buy” scheme, which, without Coalition support, will need the Greens’ support in the Senate if it is to pass the parliament. The shared equity scheme was one of Labor’s hallmark election policies, but the Greens, who went toe-to-toe with Labor over its housing future fund, are again pushing for rental freezes and caps.

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, said it was time Labor made “the big changes needed to tackle the housing and cost-of-living crises”.

“It looks like Labor’s housing and cost-of-living crisis will get worse in 2024, with Labor backing unlimited rent rises, handouts for property moguls and tax cuts for politicians and billionaires,” he said on Friday.

“You shouldn’t have to win a lottery to buy a home. We’ll have a look at Labor’s ‘hard to get’ housing scheme, but until Labor backs the Greens’ push to freeze and cap rent rises and stop giving billions of dollars to wealthy property moguls, the housing crisis will just get worse.”

Housing support is one of the first issues the Albanese government is keen to tackle in 2024, with the minister Julie Collins releasing updated figures from the expanded home guarantee scheme, where the government can act as a guarantor for first home buyers.

Collins said more than 26,000 eligible people were able to move into their own home because of the expanded scheme, which now allows joint applications from friends and family members, in the last six months.

But that scheme is limited to 35,000 first home buyers across urban Australia each financial year. The help to buy shared equity scheme is open to anyone who meets the eligibility criteria, regardless of whether they have owned a property before, with 40,000 places available once it passes commonwealth and state parliaments.

Collins says it will be “life-changing for thousands of Australians who have been locked out of the security and stability of home ownership”, but the Greens say it does nothing to help renters, laying the ground work for another housing fight between the government and minor party in the Senate.

Bandt said it won’t just be housing where the Greens begin to agitate, with the $314bn stage-three tax cuts, which come into effect in the coming financial year, also on the target list.

“Instead of giving tax cuts to politicians and billionaires, Labor should get dental into Medicare and fund a rent freeze.”

The Labor government has not changed its position on the stage-three tax cuts, which were passed by the Morrison government with Labor’s support, with any tax reform pushed out until the next election.