Wednesday, 30 August 2023

Housing crisis

Lauren KATHAGE (Yan Yean) (16:16): Before I set out what I grieve for I do feel it behoves me to note that the member for Brighton has incorrectly characterised a recent women’s caucus meeting. We have many women’s caucus meetings. There are many women on this side of the chamber. We gather, we meet and we have dinner together, and we will always work to make this place and the whole of the state a better place for women. We know how to achieve that, and do you know why – because we are a government that is woman-strong, we are a government that is woman-proud and we are genuine in our care for women and our support for women. We do not raise the topic of women’s safety on the floor of Parliament as a political tool – how vulgar, how rotten, how nasty. We raise the safety of women to address it, and we do it with our family violence reforms. We raise women’s health so that we can improve it, and we do through record investment in women’s health research. We raise the activities of women because we want to support them through groundbreaking investment in female-friendly sport. Let that be the record in this place.

I grieve for Victorians who desperately want a home but have to face those opposite who are getting in the way. Victoria is in a housing crisis, and it is a crisis of supply. So why are the Greens trying to reduce supply? We have heard from the Grattan Institute that boosting housing supply would especially help low-income earners. Irrespective of its cost, each additional dwelling adds to total supply, which ultimately affects affordability for all homebuyers. In my electorate of Yan Yean I have been struck by the increased difficulty of people to find a rental home, and I have particularly noticed that it seems to be single mothers facing this difficulty in my electorate.

Rents are cheap where I live, but a lack of rentals means that people cannot secure a home. Homelessness has become a very real prospect. The government’s work to strengthen the safety net for people not able to access housing is being undermined by those opposite. The Greens political party will have you believe that they are the friends of people who cannot find a home while simultaneously contributing to the lack of affordable housing. We have heard previously from the member for Richmond about encountering a woman who was homeless and needed help. That is a situation I have been in many, many times as a worker in homelessness, family violence and youth shelters, so I understand the member’s consternation but I cannot understand her actions or the actions of her party.

As a homelessness worker I worked with clients to access the housing market, and one of the options that was very often preferred by women was the social housing managed by community housing organisations. Through this model, usually a head leasing model, women were able to access secure affordable homes and, crucially, benefit from wraparound support as they dealt with the difficulties in their lives. I think here of one particular client who asked me to attend her community housing organisation interview as a support person. This woman was successful in securing a home, and in time she went on to volunteer for the organisation. Further along the track for her she was able to work for them when she had separate housing of her own. This is good, right?

Every new social and affordable home built through government investment is a home that is taking pressure out of the housing market. As well as providing a home to a family in need, this investment puts downward pressure on overall rental prices in the private market, improving housing affordability. It is why we are working hard to deliver innovations such as the ground lease model. This grows social housing and addresses the lack of secure long-term rentals in well-located areas. It is delivering large-scale redevelopments, contributing to our $5.3 billion Big Housing Build. These enable a mix of social, affordable and specialist disability accommodation dwellings to be delivered without selling public land, without privatising, and it delivers increased housing supply, connected communities, opportunities to leverage federal government funding and an ability to reduce energy bills for renters by building better homes.

So it is a first of its kind for social housing in Australia, and construction completion is targeted for later this year for a significant number of homes, with residents taking up space as early as 2024. That is good, right? Not according to the Greens, who are peddling fear and actively opposing projects that will deliver more housing for renters. Not only will it deliver a minimum 10 per cent increase in social housing for people on the Victorian Housing Register, including some of Victoria’s most vulnerable, but it will also deliver affordable market rentals.

This hypocrisy of the Greens campaign around privatisation is bad, but what is worse is that they actually acknowledge, like the member for Prahran did, that this will remain publicly owned, the Bangs Street redevelopment in his area. I have personally been involved in setting up head leasing programs for community organisations. To hear the Greens pretend this is about privatisation and profit when community organisations’ and our government’s driving concern is to support our communities is frankly offensive and demonstrates that they are not in touch with the community services who are doing the work and not just the talk.

The Greens political party preach about the need for more housing. They have even met a homeless person, but when they get the chance to do something about it, they oppose it. They wreck it. On our side of the chamber, we are not focused on preaching. We are focused on fixing, in partnership with community organisations that have genuine insights and genuine care for people experiencing homelessness. This work includes the Big Housing Build, with more than 7600 homes completed or underway, and our affordable housing rental scheme, which will deliver 2400 affordable homes across metro and regional Victoria. I note that the member for Richmond had a rather specific question around the definition of affordable housing during question time in her question for the Minister for Housing. I think there is a very specific answer that is available to that in the legislation. I had a look myself, so the member for Richmond might want to avail herself of the information so that she too could potentially answer her own question.

On top of that we have the $1 billion regional fund, which will deliver more than 1300 social and affordable homes to Victoria’s regions. I wish it was just the Greens who were blocking the supply of housing, but we also have to contend with the Liberal Party. Unfortunately, this is a long-running battle at both a state and federal level. When the Liberals were last in government, they slashed the housing assistance budget by $340 million – from $462.8 million under the then Bracks Labor government to an estimated $131 million in 2014–15. They made it harder for people living with severe mental illness, such as my brother, to access the rental market by cutting $1 million from support services. As planning minister, the former Leader of the Opposition prioritised lining the pockets of donors instead of supporting housing affordability. Those priorities are wrong – that is what is rotten. When the Andrews Labor government introduced the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 2018, with over 130 reforms to make renting fairer for Victorians, the Liberals voted against it in the Legislative Assembly. They then tried to amend the legislation in the Legislative Council to make it legal for landlords to force renters to pay an additional two weeks rent, as an extension of the security bond that had already been paid, if a renter wanted to have a pet. After the Liberals’ unfair amendments were defeated, they voted against making renting fairer again – again.

But it is not just ancient history; we are still contending with the cuts and bad decisions of the former Liberal government. We have read in the news – and those of us who live locally know – of the challenges faced by residents living in the Cloverton estate, which was approved by former senior ministers when those opposite were last in government. This government, with the strong advocacy of the member for Kalkallo, is working hard to address the challenges those opposite have created for residents. Those opposite have a fundamental lack of knowledge and respect when it comes to the outer suburbs. When addressing a state Liberal conference, the former Leader of the Opposition pondered how we convince a couple with two jobs in the Mernda growth corridor to move to Wangaratta. Well, we are not just a growth corridor, we are a community. We have footy clubs and barbecues in the park. We have volunteer orgs and well-equipped local schools. We have an ambulance station, a police station, a community hospital under construction and even our own train line – all thanks to Labor. Instead of showing disdain for the outer suburbs, the other side should have shown commitment to building the infrastructure that communities need to thrive. Instead, when they were last in government they promised not a cent of infrastructure for my electorate of Yan Yean – and this may be one of the few cases where they were true to their word, as they truly did not invest in Yan Yean at all. No wonder they preferred people did not build a life and did not build a community in the outer suburbs. That is not the way of this government, and our housing statement will demonstrate our respect for people like me and my constituents, who live in the outer suburbs. In my community of Yan Yean over 5000 households are renters, and I am proud that they are represented by a government which has a track record of making housing fairer for all Victorians.

The 130 reforms I referred to earlier are the biggest change to the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 in more than two decades. These reforms included removing no-reason notices to vacate, allowing renters to keep pets in their properties and to make some modifications to make their house a home, cracking down on rental bidding and making it easier and faster for renters to get their bond back – I am sure many people have experienced the difficulties waiting for your bond to come back before you move to your next property. Under our reforms, rent can only be increased once every 12 months, and we introduced rental minimum standards that will provide safer, more energy-efficient housing for renters.

Those opposite block and oppose because they do not understand. They do not understand the outer suburbs. They do not understand the lives of renters. They understand the inner city. They understand the life of the landlord. Well, we are here for everybody. We are here for the renters and the landlords, and we are here to make Victoria a fairer place for all people so that everyone can truly have not just a house but a home and everyone can have access to the security of a home and the comfort to know that they can raise their children in a stable location. Only Labor governments provide the protections that tenants need and build the homes that Victoria needs to grow our supply of housing. Our federal Labor colleagues just recently announced the largest increase to Commonwealth rent assistance in over 30 years. Those opposite would never have the guts. In the same week the federal parties of those opposite, the Greens and the Liberal Party, stood together to block the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund to prevent homes being built for people who need them, and that is why I say to those opposite: get out of the way. Let us make housing more accessible.