Housing policy is one of those subjects which generates little political excitement but which is immensely important. It is important not only to those who need new homes but to the rest of the population. If the supply of houses increases, homes should become more affordable for all of us.
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For this reason, the government's Housing Australia Future Fund is a welcome innovation.
And it is an innovation.
The idea is that the federal government sets up a fund of $10 billion. The interest on that money and the return on investments then pays for housing for people who really need housing.
It would grant money to the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation which would then make grants to people who really need roofs over their heads and who can't afford them.
There was to be an annual spending cap of $500 million but the government removed that as a concession to the Greens as it tries to get the proposal turned into law.
But the Greens are holding out for more.
"Labor has done nothing more than partly close a loophole that could have seen no money spent on housing at all," the Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said.
He said the Greens wanted guaranteed annual spending of between $500 million and $2.5 billion on public and affordable housing. For good measure, he added his wish for a national rent freeze.
On the face of it, this seems desirable. Who would argue against more money being spent on housing for those who need housing?
The snag is that this puts the government in a bind. It needs the support of the Greens in the Senate if it wants to have the fund voted through during the current sitting fortnight.
But it also needs to keep a tight hold of the public purse strings. It needs to do this for sound economic reasons and also because the Liberals' charge against it in the next election will no doubt be that Labor lets spending rip.
In essence, the Greens are proposing a radical change in the way the fund is run.
They want a cap on spending to become a floor on spending. Under Labor's idea, there is a ceiling above which spending will not happen. Under the Greens' idea, spending will be no less than the floor no matter what the economic circumstances are.
We all know that a cast-iron promise to spend money regardless of the circumstances ends in grief.
In an attempt to win over opponents on the measure, the Housing Minister Julie Collins has written to the Greens housing spokesman and to four crossbench senators whose votes the government needs.
She said that as well as scrapping the spending cap, the government would ensure all funded homes met design and energy efficiency standards. There would be $200 million for repair and maintenance of Indigenous housing work.
This is yet to convince the Greens to support the measure, and without their support the measure goes into the bin.
There is much politicking still to be done. And it's a bad idea to judge a final position by a negotiating position. All sides may be playing hard-ball but willing to concede in the end.
But it would be desperately sad (not least for the homeless) if an imaginative measure failed to materialise because its opponents said it wasn't quite good enough.
The Greens need to remind themselves that politics is about achieving real improvements for real people. Politics should not be about grandstanding.
Compromise is difficult, but perfection can't become the enemy of the good.
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