Thursday, 2 November 2023

Ministers statements: housing supply

Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (14:06): Today I rise to update the house on how the government is building more homes, particularly more social and affordable homes, right across Melbourne and Victoria. Just this morning I was delighted to join with the Commonwealth Minister for Housing alongside our Victorian Minister for Housing in the other place, Harriet Shing, to visit a near-completed housing development in Bangs Street, Prahran. It was fantastic to see hundreds of tradies at work today, working on building more homes for more Victorians. But what is particularly important about this project is it is about providing more homes particularly for people who rely on the government to build them a home, who rely on the government to provide them with a roof over their head. Not only were we seeing the near completion of the work at Bangs Street, Prahran, we were also announcing a new partnership to build more homes with Building Communities –

Sam Groth interjected.

The SPEAKER: Member for Nepean!

Jacinta ALLAN: a not-for-profit partner who are going to build hundreds more homes in four sites across the city. This is as part of the innovative ground lease model that has been driven by this government so we can drive the building of more homes. But also, working particularly with the community housing sector, we can provide services to Victorians, services to support them with some of the challenges they may be having in life – helping them find jobs and helping them access mental health services.

What was really terrific this morning was not only have we got our industry partnership and our community housing partnership – and we were joined by women’s housing service providers and Aboriginal housing service providers – but we were also joined by our partner in Canberra. The Albanese Labor government is partnering with us to build more homes across the state, and that is the partnership approach we hope we can continue to drive. We would love to have a partnership approach in this place as well to build – (Time expired)