Wednesday, 13 August 2025

Housing

Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (19:10): (1257) My adjournment matter is for the Attorney-General, and the action that I seek is a release of the documents relating to the decision to demolish Victoria’s public housing. The Labor government are increasingly under fire for their plan to displace more than 10,000 public housing residents in the middle of a housing crisis, demolish public housing and hand over the land to private interests. Experts of all stripes have testified that the plan will exacerbate homelessness. It will retraumatise vulnerable residents. It will strain our healthcare system and create unimaginable amounts of landfill and carbon emissions and cost taxpayers billions in demolition, construction and private sector contracts. With an eye-watering financial, social and environmental cost to the state just to demolish one of these towers, Victoria should expect that a decision to multiply that by 44, plus all of the walk-ups that they are demolishing as well, would involve meticulous planning and assessment, detailed condition reports, a cost–benefit analysis for retrofitting as opposed to demolishing and feasibility studies exploring the options for each one of these towers.

While it appears that the Labor government have taken a one-size-fits-all approach to the towers and refused to provide any evidence whatsoever that backs up their plan, the Homes Victoria CEO Simon Newport last week at the parliamentary inquiry testified that this work had actually been done. Four times in response to questions he said that the government did in fact consider retrofit analyses relevant to all 44 towers in order to conduct a proper cost–benefit analysis. But when the documents relating to this decision were called on by Parliament, they were denied under claims of executive privilege. The rules of the chamber require those documents to be produced, even under executive privilege, to the mover of the motion and the clerks to independently assess whether executive privilege is appropriately claimed. In defiance of this chamber, this has not happened.

It leaves us wondering: if the plan stacks up, what is the government hiding, what do these documents actually reveal and do they exist at all? This Labor government operates under a shroud of secrecy, and it must end. What you call executive privilege is just a total absence of accountability. When it costs this state so much, when so many people are impacted and when the flow-on effects are so far reaching, Victorians deserve better. That is why I am calling on the Attorney-General to release the documents and show the people of Victoria the transparency they deserve.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind members that ‘you’ refers to the Chair and is a reflection on the Chair.