Tuesday, 27 May 2025

Housing

Katie HALL (Footscray) (17:46): I am very pleased to make the final contribution to tonight’s grievance debate, and the issue I want to focus on is the building of new homes. I grieve that the Liberal Party will cut our targets for new homes for young people to have the opportunity to live in a home in Melbourne in the middle of a housing crisis.

The member for Narracan spoke quite a bit about housing, and I am looking forward to putting some facts into the story, because the Labor government in Victoria is delivering more townhouses and more apartments where young people want to live, near train stations. It is about opening doors for young people to get into a home that they can afford, and we know that the Liberal Party will reverse it, because sometimes you should believe what they say and sometimes they say the quiet things out loud, and they are doing that this week in the upper house. We know what this means: no change to the status quo and no end to the housing crisis.

Do not take my word for it – experts from the Grattan Institute have written a fantastic article in the Conversation titled ‘Victoria’s planning reforms could help solve the housing crisis. But they are under threat’. Why are they under threat – because the Liberal Party and the National Party oppose it. And the authors contend that Melbourne – one of the least dense cities of its size in the world – has a problem with areas that are locked up, especially close to areas where people want to live and should live. The middle ring has been locked up. We know that the neighbourhood residential zone covers 42 per cent of land in the inner 10 kilometres of Melbourne. Look at some of the great cities of the world. Take a place like Barcelona: we know that there is a consistent medium density throughout the city. It does not impact their liveability; in fact it makes it one of the great cities of the world.

The article says:

If Melbourne’s middle suburbs – those between two and 20 kilometres from the CBD – were as dense as those of Toronto, that increase in density alone could accommodate all of the 800,000 extra homes the state government plans to build over the next decade.

The flow-on effect is high prices and rents, a stagnating economy because fewer people can live close to jobs, and further expensive and environmentally damaging sprawl into farmland and floodplains.

It goes on:

The Victorian parliament shouldn’t stand in the way of young families who want to buy a townhouse in the suburb they grew up in, or seniors downsizing to an apartment in their local neighbourhood.

These reforms are about allowing more homes, and creating a better, healthier, and more vibrant Melbourne.

We were all today subjected to 40 minutes of bellowing from the member for Brighton, when the Liberal Party said that they would cut stamp duty as a way to get more young people into housing. Well, it is a pea and thimble trick, because we know that this $3 billion commitment means cuts elsewhere. How can you trust them if they are going to block sensible reforms for medium-density development throughout suburbs with access to great schools, parks, train stations? They just cannot be trusted, because the Liberal Party, we know, have already made it harder for people to buy their first home, because when they were in government they cut access to the first home owners grant by $7000. It is give and take.

But worse, they have teamed up with their mates the Greens to hold an inquiry into the townhouse reforms of this government – which the experts from the Grattan Institute described as a disaster for affordability. It is a mean trick – restricting access to more supply, cutting who knows what to pay for it. If you want to live in existing suburbs in Melbourne, perhaps where you grew up, it is, ‘Good luck to you. Perhaps out in the boondocks where there are no amenities.’ That is where it would be acceptable for people opposite to keep building and keep expanding Melbourne’s growth corridor.

It is a very peculiar mindset, because we know that in terms of infrastructure some of these areas are really struggling, because when they were last in government the approval of PSPs with no complementary infrastructure was rife. My suburb of Footscray, which has accommodated a huge amount of growth, has seen the devastating impact of what has been described as Australia’s worst apartment development precinct, at Joseph Road. The previous Minister for Housing, Minister Wynne, had to take the developers to court to try and recoup some developer contributions because the development was approved with no developer contribution. So the people that live in this apartment complex – after the previous Liberal Minister for Planning the member for Bulleen approved it – still have dirt roads, because we are only now finally getting money flowing through from the developers to pay for the essential infrastructure. It is a shocking approach to planning housing. It is really backwards, and anything in terms of infrastructure that makes Melbourne livable, those opposite are opposed to.

Four Corners gave us a bit of an insight last night about that mindset. It is like policy development by the Betoota Advocate over there. They stopped the Metro Tunnel because they claimed that the trains could not fit in it – like some sort of witchcraft, that we could not fit the trains in the tunnel. So they delayed it. But thankfully under this government it is now a year ahead of schedule, and it will be opening later this year. What an extraordinary investment that is for the people of this great city, to have the Metro Tunnel. It is fantastic for housing in precincts like Arden. We know that building the infrastructure first and then building the housing second is a really smart way to go about it. It is close to the city, close to amenities. And for my community of Footscray, we will be two stations away from Parkville, and some of the apartment growth that we have had thankfully will be complemented by the infrastructure that this government is funding.

Of course they are committed to scrapping the Suburban Rail Loop. As someone who went to Monash University from Footscray, I can tell you it was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare to drive there from Footscray, and for young people to be able to aspire to go to Monash University or Deakin University, wherever they live in Melbourne, I think is a fantastic thing. Of course those opposite also wanted to scrap the West Gate Tunnel, because, you know, why not just have one river crossing? We know that when the M1 stops, like it did this morning, the entire city comes to a standstill. The West Gate Tunnel is a magnificent piece of infrastructure. Again, my community live right next to the port and have grappled with bigger and bigger trucks – thousands and thousands of them every day –using local roads to get to the port and get to container parks. We know that the truck ban is forcing these heavy vehicles off local roads into the West Gate Tunnel, and that is something that every major city with a port the size of ours has around the world, and now we will have it too when it opens later this year. There are a whole range of infrastructure projects that complement a livable city that those opposite oppose.

Also – and the member for Narracan went to this – the Building Legislation Amendment (Buyer Protections) Bill 2025, which is going to the upper house this week and which those opposite are of course opposing, is about protecting people from the small number of dodgy builders who do the wrong thing. Why on earth would you oppose that? Why would you oppose reforms to protect people and protect consumers who are spending everything they have ever had in their life to buy a property? They get stuck in this situation where they might have poor waterproofing and leaking in their house. Why wouldn’t you want to protect those consumers and also level the playing field for other builders who do the right thing and who are not cutting corners and offering cheaper, shonky buildings? It is a small proportion of builders, but this is a really important reform about confidence in our market and in particular confidence in the apartment sector, which we need to continue to develop. People should be buying into quality, and they should know that if after they move in they discover that there are problems, they can be remedied. This is a really sensible reform and one in fact that the Liberal Party endeavoured to introduce themselves when they were last in government, but when the Housing Industry Association opposed it, they pulled the bill.

They have a pretty bad record when it comes to housing, and when they were last in office we saw exactly what they would do. The last time the Liberal Party were in government every single budget delivered significant cuts to housing assistance, social housing and support for disadvantaged Victorians to access the rental market. $348 million was cut from social housing funding in the Liberals’ 2011–12 budget, $1.8 million was cut from housing assistance and support programs in the Liberals’ 2012–13 budget and $13.1 million was cut from housing assistance and support programs in the Liberals’ 2013–14 budget. So when they say they are going to cut, believe them, because that is what they will do.

We have seen examples in these middle-ring suburbs with sensible developments proposed where perhaps young people can buy into the market for the first time. We have seen the Liberal member for Brighton out there protesting consistently. In 2017 he opposed a development in Hampton building 207 new apartments. In 2018 he supported the former member for Brighton’s opposition to a new public housing development delivering 300 new homes. In 2021 the member for Sandringham opposed a proposal to build 1048 apartments in Highett, and in 2018 he opposed another development at the former Gas and Fuel site in Highett. So we know what the Liberal Party will do when they are in government. We should believe them. They have no imagination. They are a pretty loose show over there. When they say that they are going to cut things we should believe them. But they owe the Victorian people answers on what it is they are going to cut. We know that young people trying to buy a house will be the losers.

Question agreed to.