Thursday, 2 May 2024

Housing

David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (14:11): My question is to the Minister for Transport Infrastructure. Yesterday the Treasurer in question time said:

… as a government we recognise that that level of expenditure is crowding out private sector investment, and we will moderate it over time in order to provide the private sector with the opportunity to build … housing ‍…

Is the Big Build crowding out residential construction?

Danny PEARSON (Essendon – Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Assistant Treasurer, Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC) (14:11): I thank the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party for the question. The member might well know that the Premier and I had the great privilege of being out at Box Hill on Sunday inspecting the future site of the Box Hill station, which will be part of the SRL project. We indicated as a consequence of that press conference that we were going to look at building 70,000 homes right along that corridor. This is really important, because we need to recognise we need more housing, more housing stock, a diversity of housing stock, right across the six precincts. We also indicated that we are doing this work progressively and we are working with communities, because we understand that these six precincts are all different and within each of these precincts there is a level of diversity. We need to work with the communities to work our way through that. That is really important, because then we can shape the outcomes. An alternative approach would be that we would just unilaterally rezone areas without any process.

Members interjecting.

Danny PEARSON: I do appreciate the Leader of the Opposition may have missed this, but the former Minister for Planning, the current member for Bulleen, unilaterally rezoned Fishermans Bend without any form of process or any form of consultation –

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for Bulleen! The member for Bulleen will leave the chamber for an hour.

Matthew Guy interjected.

The SPEAKER: Make that an hour and a half.

Member for Bulleen withdrew from chamber.

David Southwick: On a point of order, Speaker, on relevance, the Assistant Treasurer and minister for infrastructure is clearly straying from what we are asking here, which is whether residential construction is actually going to be able to be done with all of the infrastructure projects. I ask you to bring him back to the question. You cannot do it all at once –

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Caulfield has made his point of order. The minister was being relevant to the question that was asked.

David Southwick: On a point of order, Speaker, the minister is debating the question, and I ask you to bring him back to answering it.

The SPEAKER: I ask the minister to come back to the question.

Danny PEARSON: What we are doing on this side of the house is investing. We are creating a pipeline of activity, and we are creating a level of certainty and security for the private sector to invest. From 2006 to 2014 the average capital expenditure by the state government of Victoria was $4.9 billion. Currently it is well over $24 billion, and we are making sure we have got this pipeline of work and pipeline of activity in order to create that level of certainty to create the workforce that is required. The reality is that if you are against the Suburban Rail Loop you are against the jobs – there will be 4000 jobs onsite by 2026 – and you are against the 70,000 homes that we are going to be building as a consequence of this project.

David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (14:15): Which major projects will Labor pause or cancel to give the private residential construction industry a larger opportunity to build housing?

Danny PEARSON (Essendon – Minister for Transport Infrastructure, Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Assistant Treasurer, Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC) (14:15): We are not going to take lectures from those opposite, who did not start or finish a major project in their time in office.

Members interjecting.

Danny PEARSON: Really? You have been asleep, Leader of the Opposition. We are getting on and delivering the projects that Victorians have overwhelmingly voted for at the last three elections, and we are committed to delivering on those projects. I am very much looking forward to Tuesday, when the Treasurer will hand down the budget.