It’s not every day that a Jacobin article finds itself at the center of Australia’s political news cycle. But that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday, June 21, when PM Anthony Albanese misrepresented a recent contribution by Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather, on Labor’s Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF).

According to Albanese, Chandler-Mather stated that the Greens are voting down HAFF and “opposing 30,000 social and affordable homes” in the hopes that the resulting housing stress will galvanize a movement against the government. Or, as Albanese summarized, “they want people to stay in poverty so they can have a rally against it.”

The only problem is that Chandler-Mather said the complete opposite. As he and his colleagues in the Greens have argued, the problem with HAFF is its inadequacy. In addition to barely touching the sides of the housing crisis, if the bill passes without a rent-freeze — as the Greens are demanding — it will condemn millions of renters to worsening rental stress and poverty. Not only would this be a betrayal, it would also demoralize the growing movement behind a national rent freeze.