New housing minister Clare O’Neil ‘very worried’ about plight of renters

The anger of a generation of people mistreated by landlords and feeling permanently shut out of Australia’s property market is driving new Housing Minister Clare O’Neil as she takes up the fight to keep the Government’s agenda on track. But despite having two key pieces of legislation aimed at building more affordable homes stuck in the Senate, she is yet to meet with the Greens since taking on the portfolio a fortnight ago. Housing is shaping up as a key battleground for the Federal election due within a year. The Government has pumped billions of dollars into the area, putting incentive payments on the table for the States in a bid to get them to reduce planning approval times, release more land and supercharge the building sector. But it has been consistently opposed by the Greens and Coalition, who argue variously that the plans don’t go far enough, won’t sufficiently protect renters, or are enabling foreign and institutional investment at the expense of homeowners. Ms O’Neil took a swipe at her opponents, saying the feedback she had consistently from speaking to people about their struggles to find housing was that they wanted energy and efforts focused on solutions, “not on petty politics being played in the parliament”. She sees the nation as being at a pivotal moment in the discussion about housing. But the problems had been 30 years in the making and would not be undone in a year or two. “I’m very worried about renters in WA (and) across the country,” Ms O’Neil told The West in one of her first interviews in the new role. “We have fast-rising rents, a situation for renters which is not acceptable in terms of the way that they’re treated by landlords, and we’ve got a generation of young people who are feeling like they’re never going to be able to access the housing market for themselves and ownership becoming more and more out of reach. “The solutions to this are quite complicated, but the bottom line is that we do not have enough homes and we are not building houses fast enough.” The Commonwealth has struck a deal through national cabinet to build 1.2 million homes over five years. But economic forecasts and even modelling from its own advisory body warn that at current construction rates, this will be missed by some distance. Ms O’Neil agreed the target was “very ambitious” but said it reflected the scale of the problem. “What we need is high ambitions from states and territories — and we share this with the West Australian government — and we need all of those levels of government coalescing around this goal and pushing and pushing and pushing this year and every year until we can make that 1.2 million a reality,” she said. She described WA housing minister John Carey as a “kindred spirit” after speaking with him about the State’s efforts to get more houses built. However, she also noted when asked about pushing for stronger rights for renters that the federation was a feature of housing policy “and there’s nothing that we can do to change that”. In terms of what all this would mean for those who have managed to buy property, Ms O’Neil said that house prices could not continue “exploding in the way that it has” but she was conscious of the balance that needed to be struck to ensure people did still see some growth in their properties.