The Greens are threatening to block Victoria’s contentious taxes on vacant residential land and short stay properties unless they get significant changes to the state government’s signature housing policy.
Changes to Victoria’s residential vacancy tax are the first piece of legislation to come to parliament under the Allan government’s vision to tackle the housing crisis and buildUnder the package, the state announced it would charge 7.5 per cent on the income from short stay properties leased out through platforms such as Airbnb or Stayz.
“If Labor wants to pass their housing bills, they need to sit down with the Greens and support our solutions to actually fix the housing crisis” The reforms to unimproved land charges would bring an extra $31 million while the expansion of the residential land tax is expected to collect another $6 million. “We can’t afford, really, to have vacant land in metropolitan Melbourne sitting idle,” Pallas said at the time.