Government needs to freeze rent and mortgages

31 March 2020

‘I’m so worried. I have no idea how I am going to survive without help from my parents,’ laments Fiona Gu. She is an international student who graduated from Monash and was looking to begin work as a casual relief teacher (CRT) in Melbourne this year. She is afraid of what the future holds.

Because Gu is not a citizen or a permanent resident. As a temporary resident, she cannot apply for financial relief.

There are many more like her, workers who have moved here from another country in order to fill the positions we were in desperate need of just a few weeks ago. (CRTs make up 12 per cent of the teaching force). Now they are left to flounder in the new world order, in a country with no safety net for them.

Even those who are eligible to access relief express worry. Jamie (not her real name) is a full-time tutor who works from home. She worries that she might not be able to get relief quickly enough if she cannot show that her shifts have significantly declined. This is difficult for precarious, freelance workers like herself. Forcing people to apply for relief through Centrelink, an organisation that has long come under fire for its inefficiency and apathy, is setting up people for failure.

The long queues outside Centrelink and the crashes on the website have fuelled the fears of many people, including myself, that one wrong sentence in the application means we will be denied relief, or worse, that even if we are eligible, the money could take weeks to come in, way past the point of financial solvency.

Mortgages and rents have not stopped. Commonwealth Bank, the bank under which I have my house loan, has ‘kindly’ allowed us to defer repayments for up to six months — but interest will keep piling up. This means that any gains homeowners have made in paying off loans will be negated as a piling interest means a growing home loan, all of which will lead to even further financial stress when things go back to normal, whenever that is, whatever that looks like. Other banks offer similar 'help.' Help that is meant to protect their bottom line and transfer the risks of the crisis entirely onto us.

'By refusing to freeze rents and mortgages, the Australian government is risking a fractious and contentious strike as people simply cannot make their rent

AUSTRALIA

Government needs to freeze rent and mortgages

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