Wednesday, 1 November 2023

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (10:17): I too rise this morning to speak on the Public Accounts and Estimate Committee’s recent report handed to the Parliament. In particular I refer to chapter 7 on the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, and it is housing I wish to speak to today. It was a rather incisive report again. Having been on the Public Accounts and Estimate Committee (PAEC), I know the government can often be accused of trying to sugar-coat some of the findings and some of the evidence that is brought before the committee – I am looking at some past members – and there is often a robust discussion, but I am pleased to report that by and large the concerns and sentiments of many around the government’s Big Housing Build are covered off quite well in this report. I refer readers particularly to pages 107 through to about page 114, where much of the government’s performance on housing is detailed quite well.

What this report does is really highlight the fact that this government is not being transparent with its data. It is not being transparent with what its output is, and in the midst of a housing crisis it comes as a huge surprise not only to the opposition but to the Victorian public and those waiting on waiting lists, that this government still refuses to release what its actual housing stock is. The Victorian Housing Assistance: Additional Service Delivery Data, which is the key document that has been produced by governments of the day for years, basically outlines how many homes exist in Victoria. The report brings to the reader’s attention that the government just has not been transparent in releasing that, and as such, it is really difficult for the committee, the Victorian Parliament and Victorians generally to understand what benefits the Big Housing Build is bringing to the net increase of homes here in Victoria.

I note that the report also refers to the evidence given at a time when the minister was pushed quite hard on what is the net gain of new homes available to the social housing pool to help that enormous register of people that continues to grow. The report highlights the fact that just in the last 12 months the number of people on the Victorian housing register grew from 64,304 up to 67,985. For every year this Labor government has been in, the number of people on the waiting list continues to grow, the families on the list continue to grow, and it is now estimated that well in excess of 100,000 people are on the waiting list. This report highlights that despite the fact the government claims to be spending $5.3 billion on new housing and have had that big benchmark of 12,000 homes, under evidence at PAEC the minister at last fessed up that, no, we are not getting 12,000 extra homes. His guess is 8200, but even that guess is unverifiable because they refuse to release the data.

So it came as no surprise for me when I attended the Flemington towers community meeting on Monday night – there was probably quite a few hundred people in the room, people that have lived 20, 30 years in those communities – that their single biggest concern was a complete lack of trust in this government to deliver the promised rebuild of the towers. It was quite concerning as a member of this Parliament to be in that meeting when people asked genuine questions – ‘When will the towers be completed? Who will own the towers when they are completed? How will we know the size of our apartments, how big they will be? Will we be going from like to like?’ – and on every single one of those questions Homes Victoria was unable to tell the community what they were going to get. Why? This PAEC report makes it quite clear that there is no transparency.

In fact it also points out that the government has not actually allocated any funds for this redevelopment. What Homes Victoria did not tell people but this report makes clear is that there is no money allocated, and as such they have made the grand announcement of housing tower redevelopment without funds, without a plan, without developers. What they have essentially done is created huge concern and mistrust among the families of many thousands of people who rely on the state to provide that roof over their head. So I recommend people read this year’s PAEC report. It makes clear that we need more transparency around the data. We need to know clearly how many homes we own in this state, particularly in the midst of a housing crisis, and it is simply not good enough that we put large sums of the budget to work without any transparency.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Polwarth, just for clarity, was that the PAEC report on the 2023–24 budget estimates?

Richard RIORDAN: Correct.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.