At a national cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, premiers and chief ministers agreed to rental market reforms including limiting rent increases to once a year and creating minimum rental standards.
The reforms also include developing a nationwide policy to require landlords to provide genuine, reasonable grounds for evictions.
As well, Mr Albanese offered a multibillion-dollar carrot to build new dwellings, announcing the construction of 1.2 million homes in the next five years, an increase of 200,000 dwellings from a previous target.
States and territories will be offered $15,000 for each new home they build from $3 billion in federal funding for 200,000 new dwellings to tackle a national housing crisis.
The money from the federal government will then be able to be spent how states or territories choose.
The Greens had opposed the federal government's $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, arguing a lack of support to renters, delaying debate on the bill until October.
Greens leader Adam Bandt said his party would discuss whether or not the national cabinet outcomes would secure their support for the fund.
But his initial response was that the measures didn't go far enough to address the rental crisis.
"We are in a fight to push Labor to deliver for renters and we are not going to stop," he told ABC Radio on Thursday.
"We have bent over backwards to negotiate with the government on this and to push for action on renters and to get the government to take the rental crisis seriously.
"In a full-blown rental crisis, we need action now and instead it looks like we're getting more of the same."
Mr Bandt criticised the decision not to stop unlimited rent rises altogether, saying an increase once a year could still crush renters.
"If at the end of that year, your landlord says, 'I'm gonna put up your rent by a few $100' and you can't pay it then you've got no choice," he said.
"(The Greens) proposed a rent freeze for two years and limiting it after that, but we've said we are prepared to negotiate on that and it seems like Labor is not."
Opposition housing spokesman Michael Sukkar said the prime minister had failed to address issues in the sector.
"With no guaranteed investment in new housing stock, no concrete plan on increasing housing supply and nothing for first home buyers struggling to get into the market, it's clear that the Albanese government has given up," he said.
But Property Council's chief executive Mike Zorbas welcomed Wednesday's developments.
"National cabinet has taken a big-picture approach to housing supply improvements that, if successful, will boost access to housing for all Australians," he said.
Maiy Azize, spokeswoman for the housing organisation Everybody's Home, said the outcome of the leaders' meeting was a loss for renters.
"(The) agreement will not end unfair rent increases," she said.
"Limiting increases to once a year won't change anything for nine out of ten renters across the country, and has still seen rents spiral."
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