Author: paul

At the National Press Club in Canberra, CFMEU secretary Zach Smith said more than $500 billion in social and affordable housing construction could be funded by taxing mining giants

Australia’s building and construction union is calling on the federal government to introduce a new tax on exorbitant company profits in order to address the housing crisis.

“If we do not build the homes to keep up with our growing population then the social licence for immigration will collapse and it will collapse fast,” he said.

“The wealth exists,” Smith said. “But it doesn’t exist in ordinary Australian households. It exists in the profit columns of a very small and very elite group of corporations. And we just have to funnel just a portion of it in the right direction.”

The $511 billion raised would be spent on a massive construction drive to build the 946,900 social and affordable homes estimated to be needed over the next two decades

An influx of migrants to Australia will put pressure on an already squeezed housing market. One union boss has a bold idea to fix the problem.

In an impassioned speech, Mr Smith told the National Press Club that the scale of the nation’s housing crisis “demands bold solutions”

“A mega profits tax is the fairest way to raise the billions of dollars needed to guarantee every Australian has the basic right of shelter”

‘The money exists, the wealth exists, but it doesn’t exist in ordinary Australian households,’ Zach Smith told Canberra on Tuesday. 

A fight over the housing crisis is brewing ahead of Labor’s national conference as a powerful union throws its weight behind a super profits tax to pay for new homes.