Speech to Chambers

Delivered by Councillor Seal Chong Wah, to the Debate on E&C Committee Report Clause C – Proposed Short Stay Accommodation Local Law 2025, 9th December 2025

I am speaking to the E & C Report Clause C - Proposed Short Stay Accommodation Local Law 2025.

The Council administration wants to create a permitting system for short stay, Airbnb style accommodation. A $900 per year permit would be needed to advertise and operate short stay accommodation, and anyone applying for a permit would first need an approved development application for short term accommodation. This would work alongside the 65% rates surcharge applied to short stay accommodation.

While it’s a half measure of the Greens policy platform, it’s great to see the Council implementing a proper permitting and enforcement system. This will only impact properties exclusively used for short-stay accommodation, not people letting a spare bedroom in their home.

This system would have 2 key functions.

First, the Council will actually have the power to make conditions on permit approvals, and to fine property investors that don’t get permits. This is crucial, because at the moment, hundreds of properties are on Stayz and Airbnb without paying the higher rates fee to Council.

Now, these investors could be on the hook for thousands of dollars in fines if they don’t get a permit.

Body corporates and neighbours will also be able to raise complaints about problem operators, which can feed into approval conditions, or even Council decisions not to renew permits.

Second, because all of these owners will be pushed to get permits, the Council will be able to levy the rates surcharge on these properties being used for short-stay accommodation.

The 65% higher rates fee will push some of these homes back on the long-term rental market. We need to use these kinds of tools to slow the brutal rise of rent in Brisbane. 

As a reminder, the median rent within Brisbane City Council has soared by 38% in the last 3 years. Renters were already struggling in 2022, and now thousands more people are homeless or at risk of homelessness in this city.

But this 65% rates fee won’t be enough. We’re in the worst rental crisis since the great depression! Brisbane’s rental vacancy rate is just 1 percent, and the public housing waitlist is 11,000 people long. Real estate agents and landlords are continuing to jack up the rent, because they know that renters have to either pay a ransom, or become homeless.

For reference, an investor renting out an 800,000 dollar apartment in inner Brisbane could pay around 2,000 dollars a year in rates. With this 65% surcharge and permit fee, they’d be paying just 2,200 dollars more.

That won’t stop them making more money from putting the apartment on Airbnb compared to renting it out.

The fee for short-stay accommodation needs to be so high that almost all of these dwellings in Brisbane flood back into the long-term rental market. Back to where they used to be. 

The Greens have called for a 9-fold rates surcharge.

Under the Greens policy, that investor would be on the hook for an extra 18,000 dollars each year. That’s the kind of surcharge that makes investors bring their properties back onto the long-term rental market.

We call on this Council administration to be far more ambitious. Brisbane’s renters need it.

Overall, I’m glad to see the Council planning to create this permit system. And it’s good to see this Council’s consensus shift around regulating short-stay accommodation. It’s no question: this will help Brisbane’s renters. But we need to see a higher surcharge on short-stay accommodation to force these dwellings back into the rental market.