Greens leader Adam Bandt also held a press conference earlier today where he was asked about Anthony Albanese campaigning in the Greens electorate of Griffith:

The Prime Minister has chosen the electorate of Griffith to announce Labor’s plan to push house prices up even further, give $180 billion in handouts to wealthy property investors, and back unlimited further rent rises.

Max Chandler-Mather is the member for renters and first home buyers. Max Chandler-Mather gives up part of his salary for free school breakfasts. He fights for his community, and he has done more than any member of parliament to put renters and first home-buyers on the political agenda.

If the Prime Minister is more interested in evicting one of the few renters from Parliament than fixing the housing crisis, I think the Prime Minister’s got his priorities wrong.”

And on housing, Bandt said:

We know what it’s going to take to fix the housing crisis.

We need to cap rent increases. We need to build more public homes that people can afford to rent and buy, rather than knocking them down, as Labor is doing right across Melbourne, and ensure that in this wealthy country of ours, everyone has an affordable place to live.

One of the ways we can do that is by regulating the big banks. The Greens will regulate the big banks to stop them ripping you off on your mortgage. Under the Greens’ plan, the big banks would have their profit margins on your mortgage regulated.

At the moment, the big banks take money from the Reserve Bank and then hand it on to people and make a tidy profit along the way. The Greens want to regulate that and require the big banks to offer a low rate mortgage product that people can choose to take up if they want to. This would save the average mortgage holder about $5,000 every year.”