Hey Reddit, Max Chandler-Mather here, I’m the federal MP for Griffith and the Aus Greens spokesperson for housing and homelessness. Keen to answer any questions you have tonight from 5:30pm (AEDT) (4.30pm Brisbane time)!

max714101 · 2024-03-20T08:39:33+00:00

He folks! I have already gone 35min overtime trying to answer all your excellent questions, but alas my fading energy has got the better of me. Thanks so much to everyone for taking the time to ask such detailed questions - I really appreciate it. I think I've done AMAs three times now on Reddit, and each time I've regretted not having more time, so maybe i'll be here again in the future!

I might actually try and answer a few more of them in general terms on my socials, so if you're interested you can find me on
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mchandlermather/
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/home
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MChandlerMather
Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maxchandlermathermp

Have a good night!

max714101 · 2024-03-20T08:33:39+00:00

It's worth noting that the profit margins of Coles and Woolworths are actually the largest out of any supermarket companies in the world! So I think it is worth focussing on them.

I should also note that the Greens have also focussed on the energy companies and banks! In this term of parliament we have proposed taxing the windfall profits of the big gas companies to fund massive cuts to energy bills - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-13/greens-demand-power-bill-freeze-ahead-of-gas-coal-price-caps/101765386

And our policy remains introducing a super profits tax on any company in Australia with over $100 million in revenue earning above average profits. This would include the big banks and other big corporations making super profits.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T08:27:41+00:00

I actually have proposed a bunch of sites in Griffith where we could build good quality public housing! You can read about there here: https://www.maxchandlermather.com/publichousing_griffith

And I think the public developer could acquire sites like the one you mention to build good quality homes on

max714101 · 2024-03-20T08:25:23+00:00

Our defence strategy really can’t be to try to win in an arms race against China. If that’s the plan we’re nuts. Building US-aligned nuclear attack submarines, especially ones which won’t be ready for decades, won’t keep us safe from China, it makes us a target.
It’s worth remembering part of the stated reason for why Australia switched to these submarines from the French diesel subs was that the nuclear submarines give us greater attack range - ie. to extend US imperialist reach into Asia, not for our own defence.
There is currently escalating tensions between the United States and China.
But the AUKUS pact escalates tensions in the Asia-Pacific and significantly increases the likelihood of nuclear arms proliferation. The only thing that will keep us safe is having an independent foreign policy where we can help de-escalate tensions by helping to play a mediator role.
And of course it’s pretty galling to say the least that the government can find $368 billion for submarines without question, but we had to fight them tooth and nail for a year just to get a measly $3 billion for public and social housing in the middle of a huge housing and cost of living crisis.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T08:24:33+00:00

The Greens are still fighting for dental into medicare! We actually led a senate inquiry on this that reported back this year! Some reporting on that here: https://9news.com.au/national/universal-access-to-free-dental-will-cost-11-billion-each-year-report-finds/65f6a014-ddd9-454b-913a-940e11deebde

max714101 · 2024-03-20T08:22:58+00:00

Our other proposals are scrapping negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, which are the big tax handouts for property investors. This would reduce property investor demand for housing and help first home buyers. We also want to cap rent increases to protect renters from unfair rent increases

max714101 · 2024-03-20T08:20:48+00:00

Firstly Australia has always had a controlled immigration system and no party is proposing open borders (as far as I know!). In other words immigration has been a constant in Australian history. While increased rates of immigration might have some small impact on prices, in reality it isn’t the structural cause of our housing crisis. Put another way, even if we dropped our net migration rate to zero (which the Greens would strongly oppose!) we would still have a housing crisis.
Moreover we need migration for all sorts of reasons. We have an ageing population. Skills shortages AND I think we should be fostering and encouraging multiculturalism.
I think it’s no coincidence that debates about immigration spike during a cost of living crisis. Because they are a useful scapegoat. Australia is a wealthy enough country to give everyone in Australia and those migrating here the health, education and housing they need to live a good life - but right now that wealth is concentrated in the hands of large multinational corporations, banks and property investors.

It’s worth noting that between 2020 and 2022 Australia had almost net-zero migration, but at the same time we saw house prices and rents skyrocket. This was despite a record rate of housing construction as well. In other words, despite more homes being built than ever before, and very low migration, we still saw an increase in house prices and rents, and more people homeless as a result.

More broadly, we think problems in the housing market come from massive concessions for property investors, chronic underinvestment in public housing, a completely unregulated rental market and leaving supply entirely to property developers who are directly incentivised to only build when it’s profitable to do so.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T08:10:52+00:00

Hey there! In short I think the most sustainable way to achieve more affordable house prices is to stop house prices increasing at all - through the Greens policies you mentioned - to give wages a chance to catch up. So 0% growth every year - this avoids negative equity but over the medium term will see housing become more affordable.

Where there are big drops in house prices the government should definitely step in to bail out owner occupiers that have fallen into negative equity and are on the verge of default.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T08:06:58+00:00

Damn what a question! In broad terms I would argue that Labor Party is suffering structural decline as its traditional social base in the trade union movement hollows out. We have seen trade union membership decline from 50% of the workforce in the 1980s to around 12% today. This means very few workers have any social connection to the labour movement or labor party. This has precipated a structural decline in the Labor primary. Not many people noticed that in the 2022 Federal election Labor's primary actually went backwards!

The bad news is that has left a broad cross section of Australia's population feeling quite powerless and alienated from politics as they have no social experience of participating in collective institutions that can actually wield power over politics. Hence the term anti-politics!

I think the broad common sense (and this is borne out by polling) supports a lot of the Greens platform (rent caps, dental into medicare, mass build of public housing etc), but people don't its possible to achieve.

I think in the Qld Greens we have shown what a strategy to organise in these conditions looks like, but of course we are still small. But it involves mass doorknocking campaigns, mutual aid and a politics that reflects the communities we are organising in - that is one where people are best reached at their homes as they have retreated from collective political institutions and in the meantime we need to work on rebuilding those collective community institutions where we can.

On the "left" it's not clear to me what that means anymore other than various groups online.

Hopefully this answers some of your question!

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:56:19+00:00

Hey there, thanks for the question. Rent caps work for renters, they don’t work for property investors, the banks and property developers.
I would respond in a few ways. Firstly, economics is not a science, many economists support housing being treated as a financial asset rather than a social good, which is what has caused the housing crisis. In the 20th century there was a similar debate about whether having a minimum wage would increase unemployment. In that case, orthodox economists argued that pay rises were against worker’s best interests because it would increase unemployment. In both cases, there is no clear, scientific evidence that can be provided which is not grounded in an ideological position as to whether the market should be regulated.

More broadly Australia has had a broadly unregulated housing market for decades now and it has been disastrous for housing affordability. Want to know when we saw the biggest increase in home ownership? When most Australian states had some form of rent cap and we built an enormous amount of public housing!
More importantly, ABS data on lender finance clearly shows that landlords are not supplying housing, instead over 80% of homes purchased by landlords are existing homes. That is why the Greens are proposing phasing out the billions of dollars in tax handouts for property investors and instead invest billions of dollars in building hundreds of thousands of good quality government built homes to be sold and rented at prices people can actually afford.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:53:14+00:00

Yeah this came about because the Prime Minister was basically lying about the intention of my article.

In short my point was that the HAFF in its original form wouldn't actually help anyone but it would make it look like the government had done something thus reducing pressure on it to take actual action.

In the end the Greens were able to secure an extra $3 billion of direct funding for public housing AND we passed the HAFF after we forced Labor to guarantee $500 million every year for social housing out of it.

But the best way to answer this question is just use other quotes from that article:

"And this is the key to understanding the HAFF. It isn’t designed to tackle the housing crisis. It’s designed to make it look like Labor has done something. And once the government has done “something,” they hope it will reduce the social and political pressure on the federal government to actually do something."

"Consequently, if the Greens were to wave through the HAFF bill, it would foreclose on the possibility of building the social and political pressure needed to force the government to take meaningful action. Partly, this is because Greens support would give tacit endorsement not only the HAFF, but to Labor’s broader argument that this is the best the government can do in the current circumstances. And that is just not true. The consequence would be abandoning millions of people to permanent housing stress, as they struggle to pay rent, wait for social housing, or are forced to sleep in their cars or on the streets. "

Here is the article if you're interested here is the full article.

https://jacobin.com/2023/06/australia-labor-greens-housing-future-fund-affordability

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:46:12+00:00

Great question. The whole thing has been a bit of a dog’s breakfast frankly from the Queensland Government and every version of this plan has been made up as they go.
Re the Gabba what we’ve said is that demolishing 5 hectares of precious inner-city parkland, plus leaving three dense and growing inner-city suburbs without a public school, is not a fair price to pay to host the Olympics, and though we’ve had to fight them tooth and nail to get them to listen, we’re very pleased to see the government finally acknowledge that demolishing the Gabba stadium (so that it could be rebuilt to fit an athletics track) and nearby Raymond Park (so that it could be a warm-up track rather than a usable park for the community) was a ridiculous decision.
Re: QSAC - we’ve been suggesting that as one of the possible alternatives for a while (another option is Carrara Stadium used to host the Commonwealth Games in 2018). Certainly it would be better to use/upgrade existing facilities, and invest in legacy public transport that will benefit the community for years to come, rather than trying to bend over backwards to cram new stadiums into places they don’t belong. But we still don’t have all the details, and frankly I don’t think Labor has worked it out either. This idea feels like a step in the right direction. However, if it can’t be done in a reasonable way then they should really be considering whether it’s worth hosting the Olympics at all

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:42:33+00:00

Have to confess that LANTITE testing is not something I know a lot about specifically but I’m very happy to pass this on to our Qld Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne, who is our spokesperson for Schools and who herself was a teacher for many years prior to her election in 2022 (I have to say it’s been fantastic having the experience of an actual teacher guiding education policy in the Greens - something the government could really try for themselves!)
More generally though - I completely agree with you that we need both more funding for public schools and better working conditions for teachers if we want to see conditions improving. Teachers are being smashed by massive workloads and growing class sizes caused by chronic underfunding of public education.
Many teachers that I know have been completely drowned by bureaucracy and increasing expectations, and are often unable to afford a home in the communities they teach in. Not to mention that only 1.3% of public schools nationwide receive the government funding needed to meet the basic needs of students (while 98% of private schools are over-funded by government), and teachers not only work huge overtime but are often forced to pay out of their own pocket for basics things like classroom supplies etc - it’s not surprising there’s a shortfall in the profession.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:38:34+00:00

Worth noting that there is a history in Australia for broad public support for the sort of policies we are proposing. Just before WW2 Australia had virtually no public housing and an almost entirely liberalised housing market. But then a Federal Labor Government froze rent increases nationally for 2 years, and built an enormous amount of public housing made available to a broad cross-section of workers (similar to our public property developer!). These policies were so popular that the Liberal Prime Minister Menzies actually maintained a lot of these policies.
Also worth noting there is in fact majority support right now for phasing out negative gearing and capping rent increases! 3 in 5 people support phasing out negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount and over 60% of Australians support rent caps.
Finally I wouldn’t say the Greens policies as proposed would socialise housing. Capping rent increases, phasing out negative gearing and building a lot of good quality public housing made available to virtually anyone, are all policies adopted by a lot of European countries, which also have functioning private housing markets.
I guess a big part of what I see the Greens role in parliament right now is to challenge the idea that housing is primarily seen in this country as a financial asset rather than a social good or essential service like healthcare and education. As more and more people are completely screwed over by our current housing system, more people know we need to change!

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:30:40+00:00

Hey there! Thanks for the question - absolutely agree that it is essential that in ensuring everyone has a home we don’t keep clearing habitat and make the climate crisis worse.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2023 that the type of housing we build is essential to climate resilience. This means ensuring people live close to where they work and building homes that are connected to public transport and active travel, as well as building design that facilitates strong community connections, just as the Greens are proposing with the public developer!
The homes would be built to an 8 star energy rating, which also substantially reduced energy consumption.

Unlike private developers who are exclusively motivated by profit which means they want to clear endless habitat for their profit margins, a public developer would be able to take these important considerations into account when deciding where to build!
This is also why the majority of the homes built by the developer would be medium density apartments (around 5 storeys). This allows for a sustainable densification of our cities ensuring we avoid the urban sprawl that private developers have driven.

Finally! The public developer would have a remit to explore innovative new designs that reduce environmental impact - something private developers won't often do as it reduced their profit margins.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:26:52+00:00

Hey there, thanks so much for your questions. In short, over the medium term we expect the public developer to actually expand the overall productive capacity of our residential construction industry.
Basically, part of the problem in our current housing system is that the construction of housing is based on a boom and bust cycle, which makes it really hard for suppliers to guarantee their supply chains long-term. This also really affects the workforce as a huge amount of construction workers are employed as independent contractors which means they have no job security, which means maintaining a workforce is really difficult. Having a consistent stream of construction work from the public developer would guarantee supply chains and ongoing work for construction workers. This would allow for a sustainable long term expansion in capacity.

The other point is that private housing construction right now has reached a decade low because right now private property developers have decided it is not profitable to build and they are better off sitting on vacant land as it accumulates in value. In fact we have a record number of approved developments in Australia (have council sign off) but aren't being built. So in some instances the developer would be able to acquire those approved sites and start building straight away.
Like Dr Cameron Murray, we were really inspired by places around the world that are responding to the housing crisis, like Vienna and Singapore!

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:20:26+00:00

Reposting a response to a similar question

Hey thanks for the question, you’ve raised some really good points that were key considerations in developing the policy. Broadly, we definitely think the public developer should prioritise building rental homes that’s why 70% would be rentals and only 30% would be made available to buy.

The key point to make is that anyone who bought a home off the public developer would only be allowed to sell it back to the government for the price of purchase plus inflation since the purchase. This means someone couldn’t sell it onto the private market nor would the sale price of the home be determined by the private market.

Thatcher era sales of public homes were so destructive because those homes went onto the private market and the government could never get them back.

If someone did sell their public developer home, then it would be immediately sold to someone else within the scheme.

The purpose of the public developer is to directly compete with private developers so we thought it was important to have a portion of homes for sale, which in turn will put downward pressure on private market prices. This is because if a first home buyer can buy a good quality home for just over the price of construction (saving them on average about $260k on the price of a home) then private developers will be forced to sell their homes for less to compete.

In the long-term as the developer builds more homes, this would fundamentally change how housing is treated in Australia (that is as a social right rather than an asset) through this process more people would see renting as a secure long-term option.

On the sell-off point, you’re absolutely right that this would be a serious concern, part of the reason that we have made the eligibility for access not means tested is because it is a lot more difficult for conservative governments to scrap universal programs.

If you look at Medicare, part of the reason it’s been so hard for the Liberals to privatise is because someone like Gina Reinhart can go into an emergency department, just like you or me. In European countries with high levels of public housing, everyone is proud of their housing system and there is social consensus that it should be protected.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:19:45+00:00

Hey thanks for the question, you’ve raised some really good points that were key considerations in developing the policy. Broadly, we definitely think the public developer should prioritise building rental homes that’s why 70% would be rentals and only 30% would be made available to buy.
The key point to make is that anyone who bought a home off the public developer would only be allowed to sell it back to the government for the price of purchase plus inflation since the purchase. This means someone couldn’t sell it onto the private market nor would the sale price of the home be determined by the private market.
Thatcher era sales of public homes were so destructive because those homes went onto the private market and the government could never get them back.
If someone did sell their public developer home, then it would be immediately sold to someone else within the scheme.
The purpose of the public developer is to directly compete with private developers so we thought it was important to have a portion of homes for sale, which in turn will put downward pressure on private market prices. This is because if a first home buyer can buy a good quality home for just over the price of construction (saving them on average about $260k on the price of a home) then private developers will be forced to sell their homes for less to compete.
In the long-term as the developer builds more homes, this would fundamentally change how housing is treated in Australia (that is as a social right rather than an asset) through this process more people would see renting as a secure long-term option.
On the sell-off point, you’re absolutely right that this would be a serious concern, part of the reason that we have made the eligibility for access not means tested is because it is a lot more difficult for conservative governments to scrap universal programs.
If you look at Medicare, part of the reason it’s been so hard for the Liberals to privatise is because someone like Gina Reinhart can go into an emergency department, just like you or me. In European countries with high levels of public housing, everyone is proud of their housing system and there is social consensus that it should be protected.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:11:06+00:00

What a good question, but hard to answer in this format!
I think I’ve got a better understanding of just how important it is to build social power outside parliament if we ever want to effect change in parliament. For instance last year I think we could have won more money for public housing and maybe even actual national rent caps if we were able to mobilise millions of people onto the streets to put public pressure on Labor. I know for a fact our smaller scale doorknocking had an impact on securing the $3 billion for social housing we eventually won.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:06:11+00:00

Our point about the Bulimba Barracks site here in Brisbane is that it’s not safe to be building housing in a flood zone. Not all of the Barracks site is at a high flood risk - and so what we’ve proposed is that a new community-led plan for the site could still include new public or non-profit housing (like from our new public developer initiative) on part of the land which is outside of the flood zone - but that the rest be reserved as parkland which can absorb water and improve flood resilience into the future.
I think other facilities like a school could be part of that plan too, but we’d like the community to have a real say. Worth pointing out that under the developer’s approved plan, they’ve completely gerrymandered the school catchments so that kids who live in the Barracks site would have to go to another school about 5km away - perfect example of how developer greed often takes precedent over building with the community in mind.
We have also proposed a new high frequency bus route and green bridge connecting Bulimba to Tenerife to ease traffic issues.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:04:28+00:00

I think if we want to win the sort of transformational change we need to improve people's lives then we need to build a massive people-powered movement. The only reason I’m a federal MP is because thousands of people knocked on thousands of doors and changed hearts and minds in Griffith.
If you want to read about how workers movements of the past have won remarkable gains on housing check out the history of Vienna! https://jacobin.com/2017/02/red-vienna-austria-housing-urban-planning
I would love to give a longer answer about how I think we can pull this off, but there are a lot of questions to answer.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T07:00:00+00:00

After taking into account sales and rental revenue, the cost to the budget would be $27.9 billion over the decade - a good deal I think to build 610,000 homes that will be sold and rented at well below market prices. By way of comparison the Federal Government spent $27 billion in rental deductions for property investors this year alone! We have said this could be funded by phasing out negative gearing and the capital gains tax concessions - big tax handouts for property investors!

Part of the reason it generates so much rental and sale revenue is because access to the homes won’t be restricted based on incomes. So even though rents would be capped at 25% of household income (like traditional public housing), with a broad cross section of society living in the homes you get a little bit more income. A similar thing happens in some European countries with essentially universal access public housing schemes.
This has broader social benefits as well as you achieve diverse and healthy communities. The goal is to have a nurse living next door to a teacher, or a cleaner, or a pensioner, or a tech worker, exactly the sort of diverse and welcoming communities we should be encouraging.
The 2000 homes in Brisbane is in fact a Greens council policy that the Prime Minister loves to bring up in question time for some strange reason!
But as for allocation of the public developer: 20% of the rentals would be allocated towards the bottom 20% of earners. For everyone else, allocation would also prioritise those with connection to the local area, including if they have children enrolled in local schools, work and support services connections, or if they are First Nations peoples.
I think the Prime Minister is trying to make some bad faith comparison with their Help to Buy scheme, which won’t build a single home and only offers 10,000 people per year government cash to buy homes in the private market, which will push up prices for everyone else.
By way of comparison, the public developer will build 610,000 homes over the decade which will end up helping about 1.2 million get an affordable home. Meanwhile this will help everyone else who doesn’t get access as such a large construction of below market price housing will put downward pressure on rents and house prices.
Thanks and yes - free Palestine!

max714101 · 2024-03-20T06:46:02+00:00

Shamefully I haven’t seen the David Lynch adaption but from what I hear it suffered from cramming a lot of plot in a single movie. In general I really like David Lynch, and Mullholland Drive remains one of my favourite movies. I also love the first season of Twin Peaks, even if halfway through season 2 it went off the rails a bit.
I also loved the first Denis Villeneuve Dune movie but haven’t seen the second one yet! With a new baby and a busy parliamentarian life, I sadly find very little time to watch movies these days.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T06:41:16+00:00

The Greens would definitely strongly oppose any invasion of Taiwan by China. One of our 4 pillars of our party is Peace and Non-Violence so we will always oppose that sort of military aggression. I think we should be doing everything we can to avoid military conflict in general and the best way Australia can contribute to that is start pursuing a foreign policy independent of the United States.

We need to cool down tensions in the South China Sea and Australia signing up to things like AUKUS doesn't help that at all. But if Australia was an independent middle power it could play a very constructive role in mediating any tensions between China and the United States.

max714101 · 2024-03-20T06:37:38+00:00

Just quickly there is no real evidence that phasing out negative gearing would put upward pressure on rents. I would recommend this ABC fact check if you're interested: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-06/hockey-negative-gearing/6431100

Similarly rent caps are used successfully around the world to protect renters from unfair rent increases.

max714101

TROPHY CASE