Measures to assist renters, fix public healthcare pressures and raise revenue were outlined in letter from Greens MLC Robert Simms to Treasurer Stephen Mullighan.

“The Greens urge you to prioritise the cost-of-living crisis gripping our state in the upcoming budget before more South Australians are plunged into poverty and homelessness,” Simms wrote.

“The measures that I propose would ease cost-of-living pressures and provide immediate relief to South Australians.”

Simms said South Australia was “in the middle of a full-blown renting crisis”, and he urged the Treasurer to implement a two-year rent freeze.

Simms said that rents had jumped by between 10 to 30 per cent across 92 Adelaide suburbs in the past year.

“The skyrocketing costs mean that many tenants are forced to choose between buying food and facing eviction,” he said.

The Greens recently introduced a bill that would legislate the two-year ban after which rent could only be increased in line with inflation.

Simms said the state government should “give renters some reprieve”.

“A two year rent freeze will give them an opporuntity to catch their breath and it will stabilise the market,” he told InDaily.

“There’s no need for landlords to be making enormous profits, particularly in the middle of a housing crisis.”

The Greens also called for minimum rental standards to be legislated to ensure that all rentals have “appropriate” heating and cooling systems, and more public housing to be built.

“We’ve got a situation where we’ve got people sleeping on the street, people sleeping in tents and cars,” Simms said.

“While the Malinauskas government has been building more housing – and we welcome that – it’s just not at the scale required.”

Simms also called for developers to “pay their fair share in tax”, saying a 75 per cent tax on land value gains from rezoning would discourage ” useless and parasitic land speculation”.

“What can happen is someone can sit on a piece of land, it gets rezoned and then they make a huge profit,” he said.

“We’re trying to crack down on those profits and ensure that there’s an investment then that could be put into public housing, social housing, and the like.

“At the moment our whole planning system really suits the interests of developers, and we’ve seen that with this debate about the Crown & Anchor. What we’re trying to do is shift the balance the other way.”

Other revenue-raising measures proposed include a new tax on residential properties that have remained vacant for more than 12 months without reason, a levy on short-stay accommodation like Airbnb and bigger taxes on those who own multiple investment properties.

Simms also suggests bringing back the Big Bank Levy of 0.05 per cent of total liabilities per quarter on the five biggest banks operating in South Australia and increasing the Betting Operations Tax from 15 per cent to 30 per cent.

Miners were also put forward as a potential source of state revenue via increasing mineral and mineral ore royalty rates to 20 per cent of the value of resources. Further, the petroleum royalty rate should be 25 per cent according to Simms who said the rates “haven’t been increased for a long, long time”.

Simms pointed to The Australia Institute research which looked at federal and state government assistance to fossil fuel producers in 2022-23 which found that the South Australian government subsidised the industry to the tune of $159 million in that period.

Asked whether there was scope to exclude those miners working to establish South Australia’s hydrogen energy industry, Simms said “there could be a case made potentially for exemption for work that relates to green hydrogen, but unfortunately Labor’s plan involves a lot of blue hydrogen, and the government’s made it very clear they’re agnostic around whether or not green hydrogen is in the mix”.