Red Report Back - Week Ending 18/03/2023
Housing fund fuck up
I, J Bar, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
The Federal Labor Party’s Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) is once again under fire for its inability to address the Australian housing crisis. The Greens have opposed the fund since the 30,000 homes it proposes to build over five years are far less than the 75,000 ‘affordable’ homes required for that period.
The Greens also say that the government should pledge $5 billion a year, rather than the current $500 million annual spending cap, and move away from expenditure that is reliant on income from investments.This touches on several criticisms made by the ACP over the neoliberal nonsense that is the HAFF.
A housing plan that only delivers homes if it receives profitable returns from investments is a shameful policyput forward by a party that pretends to care about workers and their needs. Gambling with our futures on the stock market, with their neoliberal mates like former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello overseeing the process, is no way to address the housing crisis that impacts millions of working Australians.
Indeed, the fund itself recorded a 3.7% loss last year on the stock market, meaning not a single home would have been built. Instead,taxpayer money would have been lost to the stock market casino. That $760 million in losses could have been directly invested into building homes for Australians facing domestic violence, homelessness and those struggling to overcome intergenerational poverty that has made housing inaccessible to them.
Naturally, Albanese attempted to dismiss criticism of the policy with moral evangelising, saying that “last night and tonight and the next night, women and children searching a safe haven from a circumstance not of their arising will be forced to sleep in their car or in a park – or, worse still, return to a dangerous situation.” This is true, and these people will be kept in dangerous situations and shameful living conditions if stock market gambling overseen by capitalist shonks is Labor’s only plan to address the housing crisis. We need hundreds of thousands of public housing homes funded by the state, and we needed them a decade ago. These weak measures are simply not enough.
Rent Increases Continue to Climb as Landlords Seize on Housing Supply Shortage
George John Pinwell, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
The national severity of the housing crisis on renters has been building. Regional areas suffer the brunt of skyrocketing rent increases as national vacancy rates drop below 2%. Data recently released by PropTrack shows how regional areas are suffering disproportionately, with landlords exploiting low vacancy rates to impose predatory rent increases. Regional areas such as Katanning in WA, Port Broughton in SA, Gatton and Elliot Heads in Queensland and Orbost in Victoria have all seen an over 40% annual increase in rent.
Meanwhile, in urban areas, Melbourne’s CBD leads the increase in rent for units, with a 42% rise in rental prices over the last year, setting a median price increase of $540 a year. While many are quick to put the blame on overseas students and migration, the entire reason landlords can get away with this extortion racket is because housing is treated as a speculative investment rather than a basic right. As long as market logic and market forces are allowed to take precedence over fundamental human needs, landlords will continue to extort Australian workers.
Landlords have also benefited from the systematic dismantling of the public housing system in Australia, and policy catered towards them. Supply of affordable, quality housing is near non-existent, with lengthy wait times and lack of housing stock forcing the majority of workers into the private market.
Housing Industry Australia has also recently released data that shows how even the private market’s supply of new housing is falling far below the demand of workers, with the lowest amount of new housing in a decade expected for this year. This is what happens when a government that is primarily made up of landlords is left to solve an issue that not only doesn’t impact them, but rather directly benefits them. How long will workers suffer this humiliation and degradation? Either get used to paying $700 for a bunk bed in a mouldy, asbestos ridden shed, or get involved in the fight for housing justice. The lines are drawn in the sand.
Most Marginalised Being Targeted With No-Grounds Evictions
In the lead up to the New South Wales state election, concerns of renters and others around the housing crisis are taking the spotlight as key election issues. The Physical Disability Council of NSW has joined calls for an end to no-grounds evictions in the lead up to the March state election, with representative Hayley Stone saying "For them, what might be a financial decision is a really catastrophic life situation for their tenants.”
In response, NSW Labor said they will tighten the rules on no-grounds evictions to only allow eviction on “reasonable grounds”. What these grounds are they refuse to elaborate on. This leaves the door open for landlords to continue evicting people to chase higher profits at the expense of the wellbeing of some of our most marginalised.
This issue grows as the cost of living rises, with tenants on the NDIS often struggling to make ends meet.They do not qualify for Specialised Disability Accommodation, forcing them to deal with predatory landlords on the private rental market that are often reluctant to make housing more accessible. In Australia, NSW and WA are the only states that haven’t implemented accessibility standards from the National Construction Code that address these issues in new buildings.
For people with disabilities, as with all renters, there are issues in accessing housing in the state’s capital. The vacancy rate in Greater Sydney is 1.9 % for houses and 1.4% for units currently, according to Corelogic. With this lack of housing stock accessible to workers, the Tenants' Union of NSW said it had seen a surge in people facing no-grounds evictions. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that many long-term elderly residents in gentrifying areas are bearing the brunt of evictions, as landlords seek to capitalise on the changes to their communities by vastly increasing rents. Rental increases of over $140 a fortnight are common, pricing out many people with disabilities or who are elderly and on a pension
In NSW alone, the NSW Council of Social Service has noted that there has been a 52% increase in how many households are suffering extreme housing stress. Furthermore, NSW has no rent increase cap, allowing landlords free reign to hike prices as they see fit. With so many factors bearing down on workers as they try to survive, one sees the pressing need for housing defence groups to work in their interests. We must organise against these predatory actions. Solidarity will be our strength.
Lack of Housing for Domestic Violence Shelters
Lately, news reports have begun acknowledging the impact ofthe housing crisis on domestic violence (DV) survivors. Many families have been forced for months to live in motels, on couches and in their cars as shelters across the nation are unable to make room to provide them safe accommodation. The issue is only growing, with over 56,700 women forced to move out of home to separate from a violent partner in 2016, and higher demand surging in the post-lockdown landscape.
Regional shelters have found themselves increasingly unable to provide forvictims, and their children, fleeing DV. As a result, many victims of DV are forced to choose between violence or poverty, often returning home to violent situations.
Yet, the capitalist state refuses to take proper action to address the issue. At the federal level, Labor’s piss weak housing plan, the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), would only provide 4,000 social housing homes for such victims over the next 5 years, despite allocating $400 million towards the venture (if the government’s gambling on the stock market makes returns, that is).
In NSW, the government has implemented a $430 million fund to create refuges built on a ‘core and cluster model’, where families live in individual units with service access rather than in a communal building in an attempt to boost privacy and autonomy. Much like the HAFF, there is much to be analysed in the spending of these funds. In Griffith, $7 million went into accommodating a further 17 people in a new shelter. That’s around $411,800 per bed in a town where the average cost of a 3 bedroom home is $525,000. The numbers don’t add up.
Much like the vastly inadequate HAFF of Federal Labor, the NSW Liberals have a plan that throws money at middlemen to put a band-aid on an issue that requires significantly more effort to be solved. The government refuses to take responsibility by building public housing for those facing domestic violence and other issues, opting instead to line the pockets of ‘charities’ and social housing providers. In doing so, it jeopardises the wellbeing of thousands of workers. Every day that safe, accessible public housing for domestic violence survivors is not provided,thousands of lives are endangered. There is no price too small to pay for their safety.
Inflation Driven by Company Profits, Water Proven to be Wet
In news that surprises no one, the Centre for Future Work (CFFF) has released a paper highlighting how the recent growth in inflation has been driven by company profits. This disputes the often repeated claim that, rather than the greed and hoarding of wealth by capitalist business owners causing inflation, it is the meagre wages that workers receive as they sell off their labour to generate wealth for the rich parasites.
Jim Stanford from the CFFF emphasised this, stating“the unprecedented expansion in booked corporate profits during this period confirms that this claim is false. In addition to higher costs for inputs, companies have increased prices much further.” The report claims the setting of higher prices by corporations accounted for 69% of added inflation, while in comparison labour costs only made up 18%.
Following the pandemic, companies have increased prices, yet are still pushing for the suppression of wages, with the support of the capitalist state in the form of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Jim Stanford criticised these actions, stating that “ignoring the role of record profits in driving post-pandemic inflation reflects an ahistorical and ideological approach to macroeconomic management” that “blames the victims of inflation, while ignoring its perpetrators.”
Coles recorded a net profit of 11%, while Woolworths outdid them with a 14% boost. The Commonwealth Bank posted a cash profit of $5.1 billion as it seizes on the interest rate rises implemented by the RBA. Meanwhile, workers suffer as the gap between wages and prices widen to 4.5%. Of note was the critique of Australia’s “economy of oligopolies” where a few large farms are able to manipulate the market almost unchallenged, inflating prices to boost profits.
The myth of the benevolence of the free market, and of the negative impact workers have on inflation, have been shown to be utter bullshit once again. The real force behind inflation is the same force behind low wages, high rents, why we are forced to work more hours for less pay, and so many more issues. The real force is a capitalist class of property owners working in tandem with a capitalist government made up of property owners preying on the working class to wring them for every last drop of profit possible. The real challenge to this force is a workers’ party that organises other workers to be empowered and skilled enough to defeat the capitalists. That is what we must build, that is what we are building and that is where we must focus our efforts. Join us in this fight, or suffer in shame.
UN Torture Prevention Body Cancels Visit over Government Blocks
Photographs by Gnangarra...commons.wikimedia.org, CC BY 2.5 AU <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
Australia’s democratic facade has taken another hit recently as investigators from the United Nations torture prevention body, the Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture (SPT) cancel their visits due to a lack of government cooperation. This centred on both the New South Wales and Queensland governments refusal to give the UN subcommittee accessto investigate abuses.
This should come as no surprise as Australia beefs up the prison industrial complex on both national and state levels, with a host of draconian legislation passed in the last few years to penalise, incarcerate and humiliate members of the public for the most minor of offences. The Australian Human Rights Commission expressed disappointment at the decision, but as a capitalist institution that has little power (and little interest) to act to protect the rights of Australian citizens, they will not be taking action.
Once again, we see the hypocrisy of Australia not just domestically, but internationally. Were a variety of other countries to suffer such a shameful display of disregard for human rights, they would be shunned on the international scene. But as a loyal servant of global capitalism, sending armaments to Ukraine and supporting genocide in West Papua, Australia is able to do as it pleases with its own citizens.
Let this fiasco highlight to all workers how little the government cares about our rights. The capitalist state only pays lip service to what is known as human rights. They will do everything in their power, from locking up children to spending billions on new prisons, to cement their rule and continue to extract profits. Furthermore, we cannot rely on the capitalist state and its institutions to come to our rescue. The UN backs off at the slightest resistance. Workers must be their own salvation. If they want to torture us, we’ll tear down their prisons. If they want to lock up children, we’ll decimate their profits. We can make change if we want to. We simply must organise and build.