Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Matters of public importance

Housing

The SPEAKER (16:01): I have accepted a statement from the member for Werribee proposing the following matter of public importance for discussion:

That this house affirms the importance of housing to Victorians and supports the Allan Labor government’s target of 800,000 homes over 10 years, the reforms underpinning it and the skilled workforce that will deliver it.

John LISTER (Werribee) (16:01): Thank you for your patience, as this is the first matter of public importance (MPI) that I have proposed to the house since being elected. It is an honour to talk on this topic, but before I do I just want to, with indulgence, say that this is a matter of public importance that we are talking about today, but I understand there are many matters that are important to my community. I do want to reiterate my condolences to the families of the victims of the incident in Cobblebank and the other incidents around Wyndham recently and share that we will be working hard with them over these coming few days on some more action that we want to see. I just wanted to briefly reflect on that, but I do want to return to the statement that I have put to the house, which is that we affirm the importance of housing to Victorians and support the Allan Labor government’s target of 800,000 homes over 10 years, the reforms underpinning it and the skilled workforce that will deliver it.

The communities I represent across Wyndham have welcomed people who have made the decision to build a home and a new life for decades. Our national economy relies on steady population growth, and it is not only economic benefits that come with people moving to our communities but also the enrichment of our social fabric. I have met thousands of residents in our new estates, all attracted to our communities because they have a chance to build something special. The Allan Labor government’s target of 800,000 homes delivered over 10 years will mean more people get that chance.

Until very recently I was one of the only renters in this house. For people of my generation the prospect of owning your own home can feel very distant. Terrible landlords, rent increases and the uncertainty of not knowing when you will have to up and move means people do not set down roots in our communities. My fiancée and I have for years saved and scrimped and recently bought our first home, a modest little unit in Werribee not far from the beautiful Werribee River. Only now do we feel like we can put down deep roots in a town I have grown up in to build our adult lives in one place.

I have a lot of admiration for the Premier, so I was even more proud to hear her goal of being the leader that gets more millennials like me into a home of their own. For an entire generation this has felt more difficult than ever. Changes made by Liberal Prime Minister John Howard when were just kids have turned the Australian dream of owning your own home into a neoliberal mess of housing being just another stock portfolio. While our suburbs grew, the federal Liberal–National government did nothing to support the infrastructure our growing outer suburbs needed – something I will return to later.

This is a generational problem, and for the fake fans of free-market principles opposite, I want to remind them that the solution is supply. However, as I mentioned in the MPI statement, this can only be achieved with reforms to the way we deliver this supply. In 2023 the Allan Labor government released our housing statement, setting out a vision for the way we grow supply while building sustainable communities. Signature features of this policy were reforms to boost supply; design and standards to encourage building up, not out, which is something very important to my community; protecting renters rights; building more social housing; developing more homes in regional Victoria; and a range of other reforms to help first home buyers.

We have seen these reforms rolling out across Victoria, including the announcement this morning of the height limits around our train and tram activity zones. The issue we have is geographic. Melbourne has decades of greenfield development to meet this demand and has left us with a housing doughnut with its hole in middle suburbs like Brighton. Wyndham has the benefit of space for many of these dwellings, but we do need to look at this imbalance. After all, when you build in paddocks, you need to upgrade that infrastructure around it. These are things Labor has been good at in Wyndham. However, we know more needs to be done.

There is a bit of history around the situation we find ourselves in, which I want to reflect on. In the 1990s there were movements, like Save Our Suburbs in Camberwell, driven by concerns around neighbourhood character. This attitude is relatively new and seems to be confined to relatively privileged areas of Melbourne. Some of those opposite have subscribed to this attitude, so instead they look to the outer suburbs. When they had the brief privilege of government, they approved a flurry of greenfields development at 5 minutes to midnight in a dying term. All these precinct plans centred around my electorate. In Wyndham the then Minister for Planning, the member for Bulleen, approved the following precinct structure plans on greenfield sites: Westbrook, July 2014; Bolton Road, July 2014; Tarneit North, November 2014; Truganina, November 2014; and Riverdale, November 2014. How could the member for Bulleen have approved five precincts in the last six months of a term with no plan for infrastructure and no funding or plan for roads. The only road project they completed was an interchange at Sneydes Road, nowhere near the final flurry of precincts approved.

I mentioned earlier that while our suburbs grew, we saw no support from the federal Liberal–National government for a decade, despite their mates in Victoria approving tens of thousands of houses at the last minute. They spent not one cent on major roads in Wyndham. This stands in contrast with the partner we have in Canberra now. The Prime Minister has acknowledged the same problem the Premier has and is supporting us to grow supply sustainably. Thanks to the hard work of the federal member for Lalor, we have seen three major road projects around these precincts co-funded by Canberra. Greenfields development is important; in fact it is what has created the amazing communities I represent. However, to approve so much development without a plan for infrastructure was reckless, and now we see federal Liberal Senator Jacinta Price blaming pressures on infrastructure and services on the Indian Australian community. These disappointing sentiments miss the point. Our amazing Indian Australian community has helped develop businesses and provide services like health and education in our outer suburbs. The pressures on infrastructure and services are as a result of the neglect of a federal Liberal–National government to fund major projects in Melbourne’s west. The tens of thousands of houses approved at the last minute by the member for Bulleen, with no investment in infrastructure in Melbourne’s west, are the reason, not our Indian Australian community. I call on those opposite to call out their federal Liberal colleague and reflect on how their neglect of the west at a federal level has made lives harder for people in our outer suburbs. We have heard loud and clear that we need a break from the housing estates while this government continues to build the infrastructure we need to meet that increased demand in the outer suburbs. That is why I would welcome another one of these reforms that I referred to in my statement, the 10-year greenfields plan to help meet the housing and infrastructure demand in our outer suburbs. The plan sets out future precincts, and I reiterate: there will be no new precincts in the Werribee electorate due to start planning until 2029. This gives me and the government time to continue to build the infrastructure we need, like our game-changing Wyndham ring-road or upgrades to our bus network.

To turn in from the outer suburbs, I want to return to one of the other reforms by the Allan Labor government: the activity centre pilot. These look at unlocking potential space for development in places with access to existing public transport, as the Premier mentioned earlier today in question time. The member for Brighton decried the proposed height limits this morning in these suburbs that have been released for consultation today. He described the changes as part of a desire by the government to turn the Bayside suburbs into the Gold Coast. While turning Bayside into the Gold Coast may help the member get a more tanned complexion, our activity centres are instead a sensible approach to building up our middle suburbs to take on some of the demand for housing we are seeing.

The member for Brighton also said in that same press conference that a future Liberal government will cut these activity centres – another cut and another cut where they have no plan for growing our housing supply. We have seen this sentiment shared as well by Ms Lovell in the other place:

There is no point putting a very low income, probably welfare-dependent family in the best street in Brighton where the children cannot mix with others or go to the school with other children, or where they do not have the same ability to have the latest in sneakers and iPhones.

Now, I do not know what the obsession with iPhones is in that one – maybe Ms Lovell is an Android fan – but I think it really reflects a dangerous sentiment towards what good sustainable housing in our middle suburbs actually means. And it sees a lot of that attitude of previous generations that are locking out people in my generation and future generations from being able to own their own home and live where they have grown up. These short-sighted comments are a kick in the guts to the hard work we do in the outer suburbs, and seeing protests in these leafy suburbs against reasonable development makes it feel like we are doing that heavy lifting.

This morning the Minister for Planning referred to the sheer percentage difference between the housing approvals in Wyndham versus housing approvals in places like Bayside. I have referenced this in the house before, but it is cute – the very few housing approvals that happen in these middle suburbs that have good access to public transport. The Premier mentioned earlier today that they were at Kew, which has probably two tram lines and access to multiple bus routes as well as being nearby to the Eastern Freeway. That is one of the issues with those opposite. It is that they are not seeing that there is so much opportunity to build up and to have sustainable growth in these middle suburbs to fix this housing doughnut.

To turn some of the member for Brighton’s comments from his press conference this morning around on him, I do not know if they just do not like the western suburbs. They were happy to support precincts at the eleventh hour of a dying government in 2014 and neglect to fund any infrastructure in the west. But when it comes to fixing the middle ring and growing Melbourne sustainably, they retreat to the old arguments of the 1990s. Labor’s work on activity centres – planning for more growth and homes around transport, jobs and services, with these pilot centre locations gazetted through VC257 and GC252 early this year – was a result of that community engagement process that happens. I note that the announcement this morning is part of that community engagement to show those designs – and it is not the 20 storeys that the member for Brighton was talking about; I think it ends up being about 14 to 16, depending on which end of Brighton you look at – are sustainable, reasonable development in our middle ring.

Our Townhouse and Low-rise Code sets up those consistent standards across the state for townhouses and multi-residential developments of three storeys or less, giving that certainty to industry. All these reforms on their own do not solve housing affordability. They complement our work when it comes to the greenfields development that I spoke about earlier. There is more to do, and there is more we are willing to do. I think it is important, too, that when we consider the needs of housing, we also consider who is going to be building that housing. We have got that pipeline of skilled workers that are coming through our TAFE system, our VET system and our VET in schools. At my previous place of employment, Wyndham Central College, we were happy to host our VET building and construction, where many of those future tradies who will be working on these projects in our middle ring, as well as in our outer suburbs, are getting their cert III and are able to continue on into the industry and look to get their apprenticeships.

We have also invested $16 billion in new and base funding into skills and TAFE systems since we have come into power. This week we have launched our new campaign around encouraging young people to consider TAFE and consider our free TAFE courses. And I think it is particularly important as a lot of year 12s head into exam season – and some of them might be doing the great vocational major, another Labor government initiative – that they consider going into TAFE, because we need to have those people who can help build this new generation of housing for the next generation.

We need to work on greenfields development and we need to work on fixing the inner ring of Melbourne, but we cannot put this off. To delay and cut initiatives to grow housing supply sustainably will put not only my generation, the millennials, but generations to come at risk of not owning a home. I am so lucky to have been able to scrimp and save to buy a house in the area I have grown up in. The Liberals’ short-sightedness in indicating that they will cut this activity centre program means thousands of their own constituents in my generation and the next – do not forget the zoomers – may never be able to do the same. Our reforms through our greenfields plan and our activity centres are a balanced approach to building supply.

In concluding my remarks today and setting us off on this matter of public importance, I want to reiterate what I said to this house not too long ago. Our planning policy has these two sides to it when it comes to Melbourne’s growth and supporting these 800,000 new houses over 10 years. And I reiterate this point once again to those opposite and people thinking of blocking the activity centre zones and getting in the way of these reasonable planning scheme amendments that we are putting forward: give Werribee the break we need, and build it in Brighton.

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (16:16): It is a shame to think that in the midst of one of the worst housing crises this state has experienced since the postwar period, when the lack of affordability is at record levels, the waiting lists for homes are at record levels, the decline in rental availability is at record levels, on every metric you can imagine in housing in the state of Victoria today we are in a worse situation than we were 10 years ago. And to see the member for Werribee get up and, in an area that has a real housing crisis, in an area where land release, precinct planning, is so far behind schedule, where public transport connections have been absolutely ignored – the amount of times his leader and previous leaders have stood in the western suburbs promising new train lines that have never occurred.

Not only that, I will remind the member for Werribee, as I regularly drive through that wonderful part of Melbourne on my way back to the wonderful seat of Polwarth, that his constituents spend half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour every night stuck on the same freeway off-ramps that existed when I was a kid some 45 years ago. They have not altered or improved the connections for the people who have to go back into an area now whose population is, what, three, four, five times what it was 45 years ago. There has not been one improvement for the people of the west – the laziness. Not only did the former Treasurer – who did not, by the way, live there, so he probably did not realise there were queues on the off-ramps. I do accept that the current member for Werribee has some connection to that electorate, but he himself has not once spoken here about the queues every night, night in, night out, that his constituents have to endure. And then he wonders and talks –

John Lister: On a point of order, Speaker, just on the accuracy of that statement, I have spoken in the house about that queue at the C109 exit at Main Road interchange.

The SPEAKER: Member for Werribee, that is not a point of order.

Richard RIORDAN: I admire the honesty of the member for Werribee in admitting what a lousy job not only he has done but his predecessors have done in providing the suitable livable assets that that community needs from the state. It is a fact that his party have been in charge for 10 years, and what have they delivered to the west in 10 years? Nothing. And to have the gall to stand up here today and spend 40 to 50 per cent of his talk on the housing crisis obsessing with his love affair with the member for Brighton – the member for Brighton does a fantastic job representing –

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! Members will come to order. Member for Polwarth, I would ask you to cease banging the table.

Richard RIORDAN: I acknowledge that. I will keep my hands firmly clasped upon the table. But the member for Werribee has done a great disservice to his community obsessing with the member for Brighton and his strong advocacy for what his community expects him to represent. He could in fact take a leaf out of the member for Brighton’s book on how to represent his community.

Let us talk about this government’s achievement in housing, because after all, the matter of public importance (MPI) was not about the member for Werribee’s personal obsession with the member for Brighton. He perhaps may wish to seek advice from the member for Brighton on how to do his hair, for example, because clearly he has got something to learn in that space. However, let us look at –

John Lister: On a point of order, Speaker, I think that was a personal imputation, and I do not think that is allowed under the standing orders. I would ask the member to reflect on his own hirsute situation.

The SPEAKER: Personal imputations are not allowed in the house. Member for Polwarth, come back to the MPI.

Richard RIORDAN: I thought that I was in fact giving worldly advice.

The SPEAKER: Back to the MPI, member for Polwarth.

Richard RIORDAN: I apologise. Back to the MPI, let us look at some of the key measuring points that any rational person who was not the year 9 work experience student who did the preparation for notes for the member for Werribee would have looked at. Let us look at some of the facts. First of all, this government has proclaimed to have the Big Housing Build. The Big Housing Build, by its very name, would imply that we are building lots of houses, but that is in fact not the case. It is a sad fact that 64,117 families will not have a home to go to tonight. That is a massive increase on the situation only a short time ago. The social housing stock in Victoria and the applicants that are applying for it – it is a 13 per cent increase in just one year. In just one year, despite the billions this government claims to spend on housing, that waiting list has increased 13 per cent – and not only that, it is a massive increase over the time of this government. Some 9900 unfortunate families were trapped on that list when they came to government, and there are now 64,117. What is worse, we know the figure tonight is possibly even worse because this government has refused to release the most recent figures, and we are now nearly three months behind the public release of what those figures should be today.

Why have we got a ballooning list? Despite what the member for Werribee said in his opening remarks when he talked about the fact that a Liberal federal government had not spent money on infrastructure for the greenfields and the growth suburbs of Melbourne, let me remind the member for Werribee and others who might want to push that old cart down the road that on a greenfield site in Victoria today some 45 per cent of the cost of a home is taxes and charges not collected by the federal government but collected by this government. The increases in taxes and charges and land taxes and windfall gain taxes and growth area funds and developer charges are all going to the coffers here in Spring Street. And guess where the single biggest spend is? The single biggest spend is not in the west with the member for Werribee. In fact this government are investing even more into the eastern suburbs of Melbourne in what they are calling the biggest housing project, which most other people think is an underground train line. It is an underground train line that is not benefiting the growth suburbs. The money is being taken from the growth suburbs – it is being taken from the west, it is being taken from the north, it is being taken from the far south-east – and it is all going into vanity projects of this government. More than enough money is being collected by this government, and is in the coffers of this budget, to pay for the real and necessary infrastructure to make Melbourne livable for everybody and to provide homes for everybody.

Let us talk about those homes. How much more space have we got today after a five-year Big Housing Build? Can you believe it, we have 454 less bedrooms than when we started. It is a magic kind of incompetence that could spend so much money and get such bad outcomes. Those 64,117 families who do not have a home to go to tonight – that massive 14.22 per cent increase on what it was last year – are being exacerbated because the increases in taxes and charges here in the state of Victoria have seen property owners exit Victoria.

In terms of the private housing stock, the total active bonds collected has decreased in the last couple of years by 24,726. Can you imagine that? In a state where we have a housing crisis, the industry that we need to help support government and help support the community housing sector, the private housing rental market, is in freefall. It is in freefall in a state where this government wants you to blame neighbourhoods in the eastern suburbs. They want us to blame councils. They want to blame greedy developers. In fact the member for Werribee spent half his speech blaming the Howard government. You have got to go back to pre-2007 to come up with the excuse that it is the Howard government’s fault we have a housing crisis. No, we have a housing crisis because this government is addicted – absolutely addicted – to collecting taxes, charges, fees and levies and imposing unnecessary regulation on the housing market. We have a supply issue. That is the one thing I will agree with the member for Werribee on. He acknowledges it is a supply problem. It is a self-inflicted supply problem.

I want to put to rest another furphy that this government is very big on. They say, ‘Oh, well, we’re Victoria. We’re building the most houses of any state.’ Well, guess what, Labor government here in Victoria: we have the most people coming in – some 150,000-odd. Our capacity to build does not even get close to half the amount of people coming in. With the migration to Victoria from interstate and around Australia and from natural growth we are falling miles behind in meeting those expectations. It is a shameful effort. It is not true for this government to say they are building the most houses. Per capita we are dismally behind the rest of the nation. New South Wales, Queensland and other states are better equipped, better resourced and better skilled at matching their home production with their immigration and migration rates. This state is falling way behind. We are not the number one home builder. We are in fact barely making fourth place in terms of keeping up. For heaven’s sake, when South Australia can beat us, then we know we are doing something wrong here in Victoria. It is an indictment on this government’s ability to manage housing. The sooner this government realise that it is not about how many hard hats the Premier gets a photo with, until they understand that it is not about the amount of fluoro vests, until they understand that it is not about the announcement, it is about the output and the outcome – two things this government fundamentally do not understand.

On the activity zones, the member in his opening remarks referred to the government’s announcements today on more activity zones. Once again this government is using the politics of neighbourhood envy, the politics of blame, to come up with the reason why it wants to do what it does. Let us think about what the activity zones are. The activity zone policy that this government currently has says, ‘We’re going to put the size of the city of Adelaide into existing suburbs.’ Has there been one word mentioned from this government about how they are going to increase public transport into those suburbs? Because this might come as a surprise: most of the people living in those suburbs now probably do not think there are enough regular train services and find themselves squashed on there. Well, hello, folks – we are about to give you another 800,000 people on the same services.

Are our schools in these existing suburbs completely empty and void and able to deal with a city the size of Adelaide being put into them? Into existing health services? I am not sure there are any advocates out there for child care saying, ‘Oh, yes, Victorian government, you’re exactly right. We can absolutely take another 800,000 people and fit them into our existing childcare and health services.’ This government has a magic pudding approach to planning and activity here in the state of Victoria. The magic pudding is: we can just keep putting people in there because there is a train station. Therefore, train station equals the necessary amenity, the necessary services, the necessary community capacity to take those people – no. The fact quite simply is: this government has done a terrible job at planning for the future of Victoria. They have restricted supply through unnecessary taxation, regulation and bureaucracy that is choking the development industry. Their policy that we can provide good-quality, affordable housing for working families here in Victoria in existing suburbs in high-rise towers is simply a nonsense. No-one in the industry believes it. No-one in the community believes it.

Quite frankly, the member for Werribee says, ‘We as a government are going to stop allowing people to buy a house for less than $800,000 in our suburbs, and instead we’re going to offer them a $1.5 million two-bedroom unit in the middle of an existing suburb as an alternative.’ If the member does not realise that is not the choice that most Victorians will make – sure, it is an option and a choice for some people. But to afford a $1.5 million apartment you have to have a certain income, and the reality is, at those levels and at those prices, more than 80 per cent of average Victorians cannot afford to ever get into the housing market, least of all afford to rent properties at those types of prices.

This government needs an affordability policy, not a planning override policy that does not deliver on what Victorians need. In fact this government has neglected its responsibility to bring everyone along on the housing journey. They have abandoned young millennials. They have abandoned young Victorians. They have given up on the dream of owning a home. They want their large union mates and their large CFMEU building contractors to control where and how people live. It is not fair. It is a disingenuous and, as the member for Brighton would say, a very, very sneaky approach to dealing with housing.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Member for Werribee, this is your last warning.

Matt FREGON (Ashwood) (16:31): I thank the member for Polwarth for his contribution, of which there were some bits I would probably agree with. For instance, I have not had a haircut for a while, and a big shout-out to Shannon from Halston in my patch, in Stephensons Road. She moved her shift and was not available on Mondays anymore, and as a result this is why I look like this. But she does a fantastic job with not a lot to work with, and I appreciate that.

Let us get on to the matter of public importance, and I thank our member for Werribee for raising this today, because if we can try and carve through some of the ‘He said, she said, what for, whereabouts’, housing affordability is a problem that we all agree with. If you cut through the politics, everyone in this chamber understands it, I would say. I agree with the member for Werribee that this problem did not start in 1999 with certain changes brought by a former federal government, but they certainly did make a change. I am not blaming everything on previous governments of any stripe, but we did make a decision as a country to vote for a system where investing in property became speculative. Further to that, over the last 26 years or thereabouts we have now got to a position in our country with a mix of not only those changes – and it is not just negative gearing. Negative gearing all by itself – I think there are some arguments for it; I am not completely against it. But the capital gains tax discount that came in at the same time supercharged that, and as a result, people like me and Bec, who were very lucky to buy our first place in 1999, got tripled wealth in 10 years. That is not sustainable as a country, and the next generation – member for Werribee, you are a young man – will not get that tripling of their wealth. At the same time, as a country we also had federal policy to keep wage inflation low. We would all understand from an economic point of view why you do not want rampant inflation – no objection to that. But together with those two things, they have been a large part of our housing affordability problem.

As others have said, supply – I do not believe it is the only solution. I do think if our federal Treasurer decided to cut the capital gains tax discount by about 2 per cent, you would see a whole lot of things change in a hurry. But we cannot do that as a state government. No matter who is sitting in these chairs, we cannot do that; we do not have that option.

We have two options. Most of the revenue that we tax ourselves is property based, so we could lower our state revenue. I do not see that happening any time soon with not only this government in Victoria but any state government around the place. The other side is supply, and that we can affect and that we can encourage. Now, I might question the member for Polwarth’s maths; somehow we are building in raw numbers more, but all right, when we look at populations, we are worse than, was it South Australia? You know – nice argument. I also question the 45 per cent cost one. I actually have had chats with members who might be on the other side who might have said, ‘Oh, yes, we sort of know that’s not right.’ But anyway, I would not name anyone – that would be rude. Look, rhetoric is what rhetoric does – make your arguments, but we need to focus on supply because that is the lever that we can affect as a government. Obviously, the draft plans for activity centres have been announced today for further consultation, and that is a part of the supply response. The Suburban Rail Loop, which is pretty popular in my patch, is another part of the supply response. Before I go on further, the social housing and public housing investment is also part of the supply response.

If we look at other changes that were made this year in regard to planning for townhouses, for granny flats, for all of these things which are not universally popular – I appreciate that not everyone likes the idea that things may change over time, and I will come back to that in a moment – they are all part of the response that a government can have to help put incentives on supply.

I had a chat with – and I hope Ms Oldham will not mind me mentioning this; I do not think she will, actually – Jane Oldham from the Boroondara Community Group last week. We sat down with another constituent of mine, Nick. She told me about her concerns about the government’s plans in this area. It is fair to say I think – I do not think I am verballing Jane – that she is not overly happy with the changes that are being proposed or put forward, and that is fine. I encourage her and every member of her group to put their voices into the consultation process. She did state at one point that while she was not happy with the process probably at all in regard to the pilot Camberwell centre, she did accept that the process for the first tranche of what has come out today in the drafts has been more extensive, and that is great. I hope that she puts her voice in; we want as many voices as we can to get into this process. We have got a neighbourhood activity centre process starting up in tranche 2, probably a month away. I do not have a date yet, but I will update my constituents as soon as it is possible. The more voices we get, the better.

It is important to consider some of the retorts, for want of a better word, that come back from people who are concerned about this. Some of them are – and I think the member for Polwarth may have even gone close to this – ‘What about the schools?’ We hear, ‘What about the drainage?’ Activity centres are planning for height limits over the next 20, 30 years. This is based on, in my understanding, working towards a city of Melbourne that is likely to be 9 million people by 2050. Now, if it does not become a city of 9 million people by 2050, the economics and the market economy of these things is they will not get built. There will be no money in them, so no-one is going to build them. But if we keep growing as we are, it is incumbent on government to be responsible and to plan for what that looks like. Because, as I said to the eastern group of councils last year when they were raising concerns about the housing targets, ‘Well, okay. Statisticians are telling us that the population in this area is going to grow by X, Y, Z over the next 30 years. Have you done any planning on how many blocks are going to get cut into two or on what that will do to your parking, your drainage, your schools and everything else?’ ‘Oh, no, we haven’t done that.’ Of course they have not done that, because they are a local council, and they are not necessarily looking that far ahead.

We have got a government in Victoria right now that is trying to look that far ahead and say: how are we going to do this? How are we going to do this with some balance? How are we going to do this so we focus, if we are going to grow this way, on how we grow this way sustainably in a city that we all want to live in? And it is actually trying to put it forward.

I commend the Premier, because this is actually difficult for people. We all move into our suburbs because we love our suburbs, and then we think, ‘Hang on, things might change in a year or five years, 10 years or 20 years.’ Some people will definitely take that as meaning that it is now. It is not now, it is over time, but I get it. This is why consultation is important and everyone should have their say. We should be able to have these conversations seriously, because if we do not plan for the growth, it will just happen regardless and there will be more issues like we have seen, with all due respects to my colleagues in the west, with some of the mistakes of the past where you have got these big blocks of houses with only one road in and out. We can blame whoever you like – councils, planning, whatever – but it is important that we not only understand the problem but do something towards the solution so that the next generation hopefully can afford a house.

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:41): I am pleased to rise to speak on this matter of public importance (MPI). Indeed I thought all my Christmases had come at once when I saw the matter of public importance come across yesterday. I thought, ‘Surely the government is not going to get up and try and brag about what wonderful things it is doing on housing.’ As the member for Polwarth has indicated, there are many, many, many failings of the government on housing. And as we heard in question time on the issue of crime, there are a lot of things that government is going to do or the government says it has done, but there are not many actual outcomes that are improving things for Victorians, particularly when it comes to housing, including in regional Victoria, where housing is just as big an issue as it is here in metropolitan areas.

I want to start with a little bit on local things and on social housing, because we hear a lot from this government about social housing and what it is doing. The member for Polwarth referenced the Big Housing Build. Five billion dollars, we were told, would build 12,000 homes. The stats from the electorate of Gippsland South cover the three local government areas in Gippsland South, which include Latrobe city, which my colleague the member for Morwell will be aware of. There are currently across those three local government areas – South Gippsland, Wellington and Latrobe city – 19 fewer homes now than there were in 2018. So for all the money being spent by this government on social housing, we have actually got less. And that is not even going to the issue of how many bedrooms there are, as the member for Polwarth highlighted. That is a serious issue.

The member for Polwarth and I were both on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) for a number of years, and we heard a lot from the former Minister for Housing about the Big Housing Build – ‘12,000, 12,000, 12,000, 12,000’, we heard; 15,000 at one stage. But it took two or three years before I think actually the former Speaker eventually acknowledged: ‘Well, no, that’s not actually going to be all the new houses; that’s just the ones we’re going to build.’ And we have seen that in the statistics. Somewhere like Latrobe city, which actually needs additional public housing, is going backwards, and I am sure places like Mildura and Shepparton will tell you a similar story. On the private housing side of things, again in Gippsland South, there were 312 less rentals between June 2018 and June 2024, and less than half of those were considered affordable. That is the result that we are getting from this government because of the many things that it is doing or failing to do.

I pick up the specifics of the MPI – that this house supports the Labor government’s target of 800,000 homes over 10 years. Well, we probably all support the target. It is easy to set a target; actually delivering it is the important thing. But what I want to pick up on is the next line, which says ‘the reforms underpinning it’. I would perhaps ask the member for Werribee or any future speakers which reforms they are referring to. Are they referring to the increases in land tax? Are they referring to the reduction in the threshold for land tax, from $300,000 to $50,000 – a temporary reduction, I might add, a temporary COVID debt reduction, that lasts for 10 years. I mean, your child born today will be in grade 5 before this temporary reduction is dealt with. Is it the vacant residential land tax – is that one of the reforms underpinning their growth in housing? Is it the short-stay tax? Is it the windfall gains tax? Is it one of any of 63 new or increased taxes introduced by this government, half of which are on our property?

Jade Benham interjected.

The SPEAKER: I remind members that if they are not in their place they cannot interject.

Danny O’BRIEN: That does seem to be the view of this government, member for Mildura, that landlords are evil. But we cannot call them landlords; they are ‘rental providers’. But the problem is, as I have just provided to the house, they are not providing many rentals anymore, and there is a very good reason for that – because they are feeling the pinch.

I have used this example from my electorate a couple of times before, but I got an email several years ago from some constituents, a couple who are retired teachers. They are not land barons. You would not call them landlords at all – retired teachers. They have got three or four units in Sale. Their land tax last year had gone to $2775. Two years earlier it had been $385. That is the increase in land tax they had found, which is just a massive, massive increase. These are people that deliberately go out of their way to try and get tenants who are single mums or pensioners. My constituents – as I said, they are retired teachers. We desperately try and keep the cost down. They wrote to me initially about the increase in costs of being a rental provider from having to meet all the new requirements that the government brought in 2021. That year, when they had to get all their rental properties up to scratch, literally that cost half their rental income that year. So it was virtually wiped off, because of course once they factored in rates, electricity, other services and interest rates, they were not going to make any money out of that. And that is repeated across the state time and time again.

As we are travelling around, we talk to investors, we talk to real estate agents. They are just aghast at the policies that this government is taking, and they are voting with their feet and moving away. I think I am right in saying the member for Gippsland East has told the story – he might have even said it in here. He went to Queensland last year and was talking with a –

Richard Riordan interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: He probably did go fishing, member for Polwarth. He was talking to a real estate agent who said, ‘Whatever you’re doing down there in Victoria, don’t change anything, because all the Victorians are coming to Queensland and bringing their money up here and buying investment properties.’ That is not a surprise. Why would you invest in Victoria when you are just going to get tax after tax after tax?

Of course there is another big one coming with the emergency services tax, and I say ‘coming’ because we have already got the hit now on residential properties and on commercial properties. We have had a doubling of the rate for the emergency services tax. But next year a new tax is coming in on non-principal primary residents, and that is in the budget papers. There was a jump up in the projections of what the increase would be, from around $620 million to $800 million. We asked in the other place during the debate on this what that jump up is: ‘Is that just valuation increases, Treasurer?’ And the Treasurer said, ‘No, that’s the introduction of the non-principal primary residence tax.’ So there is a new increase coming that is going to massively impact on landlords and rental providers – $500 million over the next three years.

Jade Benham: How much?

Danny O’BRIEN: Five hundred million dollars. This government – these economically inept people on that side – do not understand how this has an impact on renters, because that will be passed through. For all the things that I have just said, all the things that rental providers have had to deal with over the last couple of years, this is an additional one. They do not have the capacity to absorb that anymore. They cannot just absorb that.

When we asked the then Treasurer, the former member for Werribee, about this in PAEC two years ago, I said, ‘How does this increase in the COVID debt levy land tax flow through to rents that renters are going to have to pay?’ ‘No, not an issue, Mr O’Brien. That is not an issue at all. We believe there are other factors that influence supply, not the taxes.’ So for people like my constituents who saw their land tax in three years go from $385 to $2800, apparently that has no impact on their decision to continue to invest in rentals.

So this is not about impacting landlords – and absolutely it is, because they are walking away – but it gets passed on. Yet we hear from those opposite and we hear from the economic illiterates up the back there in the Greens that we have got to do something to reduce the cost of rent. It is just not happening. Indeed the National Shelter and SGS Economics & Planning rental affordability index released in November showed that in regional Victoria rental affordability fell to record lows last year after 10 years of this survey going out. It is just not affordable. The average rental household in regional Victoria are now paying 28 per cent of their gross income, which is rated as moderately unaffordable. Well, I am not surprised when landlords are taxed like this, when developers are taxed like this so that there is no incentive and in fact there is a disincentive to actually build new homes or put more rental properties on the market. That is why you have a failure. That is why you have unaffordable housing, and most of it can be sheeted back to these economic illiterates on this side.

The SPEAKER: I remind members that if they are not in their allocated seats it is inappropriate to speak.

Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (16:51): I am very happy to stand here today and speak on the matter of public importance (MPI) that the member for Werribee has put forward:

That this house affirms the importance of housing to Victorians and supports the Allan Labor government’s target of 800,000 homes over 10 years, the reforms underpinning it and the skilled workforce that will deliver it.

Housing is an incredibly important topic, and it is an everything issue. Almost all aspects of public policy intersect in some way with the topic of housing; whether it be inequality, fertility, health, climate change or economic growth, you name it, housing intersects with it. Housing affordability is one of the greatest economic and social challenges facing our state today. For too many Victorians the dream of owning a home or even living in the community they grew up in is drifting further out of reach. At the core of this crisis is a simple truth: we do not have enough homes in the places where people want and need to live. Unless we change how we plan and build our suburbs, we risk creating a Victoria where opportunity is limited by postcode and where wealth determines who gets to live where. That is not the future we want, and that is why this government is taking bold steps to build more homes and deliver real housing choices for all Victorians.

We know that the biggest issue with housing is lack of supply. We simply do not have enough homes in the areas where people want to live to keep costs at a manageable level for workers. Without radical changes to how we build our suburbs, we are at risk of gating off entire areas or even entire councils to future generations, to low- and middle-income people and to minority communities that are socio-economically disadvantaged. Why is it right that areas such as Brighton or Kew or Toorak be impossible for so many to live in? These areas have the resources that people want to live near – great public transport and access to public services and education and other amenities. They are already there. Of course these areas are in massive demand because of these things; that is part of the reason why purchasing a home there is so expensive. But right now, unless you are incredibly fortunate to have a high income that you have worked hard for or inherit wealth, then you just cannot afford to live in these communities. That is why building more medium-density in these areas and other middle-ring suburbs is so important.

Of course some are always going to be able to purchase bigger or nicer homes further out where amenities may be more limited, and that is the trade-off. But it means there is a choice that is available where Victorians can decide what they want to prioritise and what works best for them and their family. Right now that choice does not exist.

It is not just about the wealthiest areas, though, and that is why I am so pleased to have both Noble Park and Springvale in my electorate included in the new train and tram activity centres. And not only am I excited; so is my community and so is the business association in my area. They are excited to see this, because without greater choice within our suburbs, the reality is many people who grow up in my community do not have the ability to purchase a home here anymore. Many move away from their families, and others end up renting long term. I want to stress that these are not necessarily bad options; it is all about choice and trade-offs and what a person or family’s preferences are. But right now many people simply do not have that choice. They do not have the option in any capacity to live where they grew up, be close to family and be close to friends, and I believe that should be an option that is available to everyone, regardless of where they grow up.

The opposition clearly have different views on this. They do not want to see homes built in this state, and they want housing to be more and more unaffordable for everyday hardworking Victorians. While the Shadow Treasurer is out protesting the construction of homes in his community, this government is actually out building homes and getting stuff done. The member for Hawthorn, the previous Leader of the Opposition, even climbed onto the back of a ute to protest a social housing project in Hawthorn which provides 200 homes to people in need, such as those suffering from domestic and family violence. The path those opposite want us to head down is one where it would be effectively statistically impossible for somebody who grows up in my electorate to live in large portions of our state by establishing de facto gated communities. Honestly, I think that is a depressing reality that we need to avoid.

I would also like to quote a current Liberal member, Mr Mulholland, who sits in the other place. He said:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

If the Liberal Party wants to remain relevant to young people, they must reject the short-sighted and unfair approach of pulling up the ladder and instead drop it down so the next generation can secure a home.

I hope that those opposite, such as the member for Hawthorn and the member for Brighton, follow their colleague’s advice, because why would a young person support the Liberal Party when it is doing everything it actively can to try and sabotage young people’s futures and ability to purchase a home on their own? Honestly, those opposite should be more explicit in their language. They should just say outright that they hate young people living in their leafy communities and that they do not want people who need access to social housing, such as victims of domestic and family violence, living in their suburbs.

Last time the Liberals were in government every single budget delivered significant cuts to housing assistance, social housing and support for disadvantaged Victorians to access the rental market. I will go through my list. $348.8 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, $13.1 million was cut from housing assistance and support programs in the Liberals’ 2013–2014 budget and 210 dwellings were cut from the social housing acquisition program in the Liberals’ 2014–15 budget. This to me smells of elitism – forget about social housing, forget about those that really need housing. But we on this side are doing it. We are building homes. We are there to support people who need housing.

The issue of housing affordability has broader impacts on wealth inequality within our society. Constraints on housing supply are turning housing into a scarce asset, more similar to bonds, fine art, fine wine and stocks. This has not always been the case and is not even the case in major cities around the world. In Tokyo, for example, the planning laws in place allow for rising demand to lead directly to more supply, not higher prices. The issue of a lack of housing supply has meant that most economic growth has accrued to landowners and less to everyone else. Economist Thomas Piketty has demonstrated an increase in the share of national income that flows to owners of capital, rather than to workers within developed countries with a lack of housing supply.

In many Western countries this has manifested as an increase in the share of income going to landowners or rents, driven by the massive increases in housing costs. We effectively have a scenario where those traditionally on the lowest incomes with more insecure work, renters, are seeing the largest burden from a lack of housing supply. This is why the Allan Labor government’s rental reforms are so critical for many Victorians. We need to give renters some of the same stability and choice that home ownership provides and provide support to get them into the housing market as first home buyers.

I know I touched briefly on housing and fertility, and I would like to make one final point that is more rarely spoken about in the context of housing, and that is people’s ability to start a family. You can frame this as an issue of birthrates falling and managing that, but I prefer to talk about it in the context of choice. The more expensive an extra bedroom is, the more expensive it is to have one or more children. Expensive housing forces people to wait before having kids and takes away options for where they can move to when they do purchase or rent a home. I believe that if a family wants to have a child – or two or three or however many they want – then we should be creating an economy where that choice is available for everyone, and the government’s housing agenda supports this vision. We should be constructing more three-bedroom apartments, which are massively in demand but rarely built, to allow more families to affordably live in areas with high-quality amenities. I would like to finish by reaffirming that I support this MPI, and credit to the member for Werribee for putting it forward.

Chris CREWTHER (Mornington) (17:01): I rise to address this matter of public importance (MPI) where the government asks us to affirm the importance of housing and endorse its target of 800,000 homes over 10 years. Lofty targets and glossy announcements mean little after a decade of failed delivery. Labor have promised 80,000 homes per year, yet their record shows they cannot even meet a fraction of that.

Let us ask a few important questions after nearly 23 out of 27 years with a Labor government and nearly 12 years of a Labor government in a row. Is the public housing waitlist at record lows? No, it is at record highs, with over 66,000 on the public housing waitlist and over 30,000 people on the priority list. That is an increase of over 13 per cent in the last 12 months. That compares to 9900 or so when the Liberals were last in government in 2014. Is homelessness now at record lows? No, we are at record highs, including the peninsula, which has the highest rate of rough sleeping now in Victoria. Is it really easy for Victorians to buy affordable houses and get affordable rentals? No, we have a housing crisis. It is getting harder and harder, more expensive and more out of reach. Are land and other property taxes at record lows, encouraging investment in housing? No yet again; they are at record highs, discouraging investment and seeing people flee the rental provider market, meaning less stock and higher rents. For example, new lettings decreased for Victoria between March 2023 and 2024 by more than 11.8 per cent.

Lastly, are new homes being built left, right and centre? No yet again. For 10 years, housing outcomes have gone from bad to disastrous. Labor vowed to deliver 80,000 homes per year in 2023, yet in reality barely 55,000 homes were built in that same period. I will give you another example. Currently there is a 60 per cent shortfall of homes approved compared to the increase in population, so for every 100,000 people coming to Victoria, there are only 40,000 new homes approved. In fact the number of new homes being started in the year to March 2024 sank to just over 51,000, a decade low. During this period we also saw the fewest monthly approvals for detached houses in Victoria since 2013. This directly links into stability. Having housing means simple things like having a shower, looking after one’s family, getting into or staying in education and work and much more. I know this, having worked with Donation Chain a number of years ago to bring about a community shower facility in Frankston.

It is getting harder than ever to buy or rent a home in Victoria. Melbourne’s rental vacancy rate sits at 1.8 per cent, hitting a historic low last year at 1.3 per cent. Total active bonds for Victoria between September 2023 and September 2024 decreased by over 24,700. This suggests a wipe-out of thousands of rental properties. There was the announcement of the Big Housing Build in 2020. Social housing stock in June 2020 was just over 85,000, and in June 2024 it was 89,500 – a net increase of just 4300 or so in four years. The government claim that they have delivered an additional 11,575 homes to 2025, but they demolished and discarded 5716 homes in the same period, so they only added 5859 homes. Unoccupied housing in June 2020 was 3855. In June 2024 it was 5087 – an increase of just 1232 vacant homes.

Overall since June 2020 there are 423 less public housing bedrooms as well, and it is no wonder that the social housing waitlist has blown out to over 66,000 as of today – as I mentioned, an over 13 per cent increase in just one year. That is 66,000 vulnerable Victorians waiting, often for many years, for a secure home. Many of these individuals are domestic violence victims. Victorians who have experienced family violence are on average waiting two years for public housing. More specifically, women and children are waiting, according to the budget papers most recently, almost 18 months for priority housing. Indeed the number of people seeking housing due to domestic violence is growing at an alarming rate, increasing by over 14 per cent in the last year. I do want to note that the member for Narracan actually did a fair bit in this space in his electorate before he was a member, and if you compare that with, say, the Mornington Peninsula, the member for Narracan has actually done more in the domestic violence housing space in his area than the government has done on the Mornington Peninsula. Fortunately, there is a similar community initiative that is coming, which is Moonah House, and I went to a Celtic fundraiser for them on Saturday night to raise funding towards this initiative which will provide important housing for women and children who are fleeing family violence. But that is a community initiative with little to no government support. As well, a lady contacted me in the last week, who I have now helped to get onto the priority public housing waitlist. She faces eviction on 24 September – this month – with no options yet, after having escaped domestic violence and therefore no longer being able to afford rent on her own.

If we look more generally across this whole issue, Labor has the lowest proportion of social housing in Australia – just 2.9 per cent of dwellings. That has led to a homelessness crisis. In 2023–24 over 102,000 Victorians sought assistance from homelessness services. As I mentioned, the peninsula has the highest rate of rough sleeping now in the state. What is holding this back? One factor is red tape. The body representing caravan and residential parks has indicated that with simple red-tape changes they could have an extra 200,000 homes within their facilities in just a few years. Another is taxes. Since coming to power once again in 2014, this Labor government have introduced or increased 63 taxes, around half of which have hit property and housing. The result is that Victoria’s property industry has been treated like an ATM, expected to cough up billions and billions of dollars a year in land tax, stamp duty and other charges – around half of all state revenue. We have also had, for example, the vacant residential land tax and the emergency services tax, which has already been introduced in parts on, for example, residential and commercial properties, but it is going to be going up even further next year and particularly hitting farmers as well. We have also had the scrapping of the off-the-plan stamp duty concessions, increased land tax, the new short-stay tax and more. Each of these policies make it more expensive or more difficult to build, sell or otherwise own a home or property in Victoria, and many of these costs are passed through to renters and push rental providers out of the market altogether, meaning less stock.

For example, when Labor scrapped the off-the-plan stamp duty concessions in 2017, apartment sales plummeted by 33 per cent the next year, leading to fewer new apartments being built and reducing state revenue by an estimated $924 million. Indeed the Urban Development Institute of Australia warns that unless there is urgent tax reform, Victoria will build only half as many apartments between 2022 and 2027 as it did in the previous five years, and that is indeed a disastrous outcome.

I want to, in the last minute, focus on the Mornington Peninsula. Homelessness has surged by 37 per cent in the past five years, according to Southern Peninsula Community Support. There are over 3000 applications for public housing from Mornington Peninsula residents out of the 66,000 altogether. Half of these are classed as priority, such as the person I mentioned fleeing family violence who approached me in the last week. The shire’s latest research identifies that at least 689 people are out there experiencing homelessness on any given night, although the true number is likely much higher. We now have people sleeping rough in cars, on the foreshore and elsewhere. Many are women – around 60 per cent of those seeking crisis help – and often older women over 50 who have nowhere to go. Shockingly, around 20 per cent of homelessness on the peninsula is being faced by those who are under 18 years old. So we need to do a lot more in this space, and this MPI makes a mockery of what this Labor government claims to be doing. They need to do a lot more.

Ella GEORGE (Lara) (17:11): I am delighted to be speaking on the matter of public importance submitted by the member for Werribee:

That this house affirms the importance of housing to Victorians and supports the Allan Labor government’s target of 800,000 homes over 10 years, the reforms underpinning it and the skilled workforce that will deliver it.

It is always great to stand up in this place and speak about the importance of housing for all Victorians. I am so proud to be a member of the state Labor government, a government that is committed to investing in housing and building more homes for Victorians close to public transport, employment opportunities, schools and educational institutions. Homes are more than just a place to live. Homes are so much more than a roof over your head. Homes are a place to feel safe and to spend time with your family and friends and a place to feel connected to a community. When we talk about our target of building 800,000 homes, we are not just talking about some bricks and plaster, a roof with solar panels and a splash of paint. We are talking about a vision for our state to ensure that every Victorian can access a home in the place they want to live in. Whether they are renting, buying or living in social housing, every Victorian should be able to live in the community that they want to live in.

Like many communities around Victoria, there are many families and households in Geelong’s northern suburbs that rely on social housing for a secure home. The northern suburbs of Geelong, particularly in postcode 3214, which covers Corio and Norlane, have some of the highest rates of social housing in this state, and there are high rates of people renting their homes in Corio and Norlane. ABS data from 2021 tells us that 45.4 per cent of people living in the 3214 postcode rent their homes, as opposed to 28.5 per cent across Victoria. The importance of housing is something that residents in the Lara electorate know too well.

In my role as the member for Lara I have had the opportunity to meet many community leaders who are passionate about ensuring there are homes for everyone who needs one in our local community. One of those leaders is Clare Johnston, a mum and Norlane resident. Clare shared her story with me. It is a story of resilience and strength. She moved to Norlane from interstate when seeking an affordable rental for her family. Clare describes Norlane, which is ranked as Victoria’s most disadvantaged suburb, as incredibly strong and vibrant. I have to agree with that description. The Norlane community is one of the most resilient communities that I have ever encountered. Clare describes Norlane as a place where people take care of one another. She says that Norlane is a place where neighbours know each other’s names, share fruits and vegetables over fences and organise community events entirely through the dedication of volunteer members on a shoestring budget.

Clare has raised a number of concerns with me about the supply of social housing in our region. One of the points she has raised is the importance of delivering homes for people in the communities where they belong, making sure people have a place to live that is close to those they know, the services they already access and the community centres – like the wonderful Norlane Community Centre – that they visit for support every week.

Housing policy that delivers more homes in the places where people want to live is a policy that I wholeheartedly support. Clare is an incredible advocate for housing in the Norlane community and is passionate about making sure every Norlane resident has a great home to live in. She is also an advocate for mental health, and Clare leads Antifragile, a group that uses art to express and explore their experience of living with a long-term mental health related disability. Their exhibition uses these artworks to prompt a community-wide conversation on mental health and wellbeing supports, and I am looking forward to visiting the exhibition in October. Can I take this opportunity to thank Clare for her advocacy and commitment to making sure that everyone has a home in our community.

In my contribution today I want to touch on why our government’s target of building 800,000 new homes over the next 10 years and the reforms underpinning them are so important for young people. For young people, finding suitable housing is harder than ever. It is harder than ever to find an affordable rental close to the things that young people need: access to public transport, education and secure employment. It is harder than ever to buy your first home. This plan to build 800,000 new homes is about more than just the numbers or ticking the boxes; it is about delivering for young Victorians and providing fairness and equal opportunities for future generations. More homes means more opportunities for young people to thrive in the communities that they grew up in, close to their parents, their friends and their families; close to educational opportunities, universities and TAFEs; and close to employment opportunities where they can get their start in life.

I am honoured to represent an incredibly diverse and multicultural community. The Lara electorate is home to people from many different backgrounds, cultures and faiths. Migrant and refugee families in Lara and across Victoria contribute to our society, economy and culture every single day. They are teachers, nurses, small business owners, volunteers, neighbours, police officers, real estate agents and electorate officers. Under this Labor government, we will continue to ensure that our state remains a place where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. For many of our multicultural families, especially migrants and refugees, the challenge of finding a place to live can be even harder. Too often they are overlooked by landlords because of their name, their accent or because they are new to this country. That is not fair, and it is not the Australia we believe in. These families deserve the same chance as everyone else to find safe and affordable housing close to work, schools and their community networks.

These housing targets that we have spoken about – a goal of building 800,000 new homes in Victoria – are underpinned by a strong housing reform agenda. On that note, Victoria has introduced reforms to make building small second homes up to 60 square metres much easier, usually without requiring a planning permit unless special controls apply. These dwellings still require a building permit and must remain on the same lot as the main house. To add on this, the proposals also aim to enable home owners to subdivide their blocks, perhaps adding multiple dwellings or townhouses, with dramatically shortened approval timelines or no planning permits at all. These reforms are aimed at ensuring that more houses can be built so that we can meet our goal of 800,000 new homes in Victoria.

When it comes to renting, we have introduced reforms to make renting fairer for all Victorians, from banning no-fault evictions to introducing mandatory property standards to ensure that properties are safe and habitable for people to live in, and from prohibiting rental bidding that drives up the prices of rentals to introducing portable bonds, which I know will be so helpful, particularly for young people as they move from place to place.

While those opposite are blocking housing reform, Labor is getting on with building homes. They talk about a housing crisis while we are introducing legislation to address it and while we are building thousands of new homes for Victorians.

Victorians do not need empty promises from those opposite, they need homes. Only a Labor government can and will deliver homes for Victorians. It should be no surprise to anyone here that we heard from the member for Brighton today, who said that they will stop our plans to build homes in Victoria. The member for Brighton said:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

We strongly oppose what the government has proposed with the activity centres. They will not happen in their form under a future Liberal government.

What the member for Brighton here is saying is that those opposite will not be building the homes that Victorians need. They will not be building the homes for young people to move into, to purchase their first homes near their friends, near their families, in the communities that they want to live in.

Of course there is always more to do. Housing affordability is one of the greatest challenges of our time, and our government is determined to meet it head-on. We will continue to build more social and affordable housing, protect renters and ensure that every family in Victoria, no matter their background, has a place to call home. Our housing policy is not just a plan to build 800,000 new homes. It is so much more than that. It is a vision for our state, a vision for affordable homes in the places where people want to live – a vision for a fairer, more equitable Victoria that ensures the next generation of young people in Victoria can rent homes in the communities they want to live in and can buy their first home as well near their friends, their families, around the corner from where they grew up. It is about not just putting a roof over people’s heads but giving people hope that they can build the life that they want to build in the place where they want to build it. I commend our government’s housing reform agenda and our ambitious target of building 800,000 homes, and I commend this matter to the house.

Will FOWLES (Ringwood) (17:21): It is my pleasure to rise to make a contribution on this matter of public importance submitted by the member for Werribee, who I know has a genuine interest in this public policy area. It is a public policy area that members of this chamber will know that I have spoken on in almost every single contribution I have made in the past couple of years. The same cannot be said, though, of those who sit to my right. The Liberal Party have discovered housing policy only very recently. In fact if you go back to the 2018 election, they did not have a housing policy. There was nothing – literally nothing – on the table for housing in the 2018 election. Liberal governments, state and federal, and Liberal oppositions, state and federal, frequently have not had a housing spokesperson or housing minister. This is a very new issue for the Liberals. It is an issue that, frankly, is principally of their making in terms of federal policy settings, and it is an issue they have only come to very, very, very late.

We have heard some extraordinary things from members on both sides of the chamber today. We have heard about the doughnut from the member for Werribee, we have heard about neighbourhood envy from the member for Polwarth, we have heard about economic illiterates from the member for Gippsland South and we have heard that housing means having a shower from the member for Mornington. But I think my favourite was from the member for Gippsland South, that we are not allowed to call landlords landlords anymore. Well, what an ill-natured knave he is; what a bounder, what a cad, what a beef-witted hedgepig. Really, we should bring back all of the ‘ye olde times’ insults, perhaps. We should bring all of our language back to that of middle England in order to make sure that we do not offend the landed gentry, to which the member for Gippsland South seems so eager to suck up.

I want to take you through some of the failings from the Liberals on this, but do not worry, those to my left are going to get a turn too. I want to talk a little bit about the importance of treating housing as a human right, not as an investment class. As recently as the last federal election the federal housing minister Michael Sukkar got up at a Property Council Australia function and absolutely defended the importance of housing as an investment class – that that was absolutely critical to its success – and I have heard the member for Polwarth talk about the importance of the private rental market being a key participant in the housing market. Well, almost every single real estate investor is there for a tax-driven purpose, because if you actually look at the gross yields on a pre-tax basis, the gross yields for most rental properties ensure that you simply cannot make money on that investment. Most residential property yields sit at between 3 and 4 per cent. If they were 100 per cent geared, they would be underwater, and indeed even with moderate gearing they can be underwater. People are simply investing in this as an asset class in order to extract the tax benefit from that investment, namely that of negative gearing.

Now, that is a tax benefit that accrues to rich people, people with big incomes. And in fact the higher your income, the more of your income that is in the top tax bracket, the better the benefit you derive from owning negatively geared – that is, loss-making – residential property. And that is at the absolute core of the failures of our system, because it is treated only as an asset class and not as a human right. Housing is a fundamental human right. If you think about any mining project across the country, the first thing they do when they arrive is they get houses on the ground. And yet we as a government – governments local, state and federal – do not look at that as the primary driver of economic growth. If you cannot house the people, you cannot grow the economy; it is as simple as that.

And if we turn to the reforms of this Labor government, there are some excellent reforms that they have undertaken – no doubt about it. You are not going to get quibbles from me about making it easier to put second dwellings in homes. You are not going to get quibbles from me about making it easier to convert standard housing blocks into dual-occupancy, townhouse-type dwellings. They are all excellent reforms. But I just make the perhaps obvious point that you simply cannot live in a permit. We are hearing lots and lots and lots from this government about the increase in housing approvals. You cannot live in an approval. You cannot shower in an approval. You cannot grow your kids up in an approval. The reality is that without systemic, deep reform to the building industry itself, there simply will not be the uplift in housing that we need.

I admire Labor for setting a target as ambitious as 800,000 over 10 years. I admire the chutzpah of the member for Werribee for actually getting up and flagging that target yet again, because they are not within a prayer of hitting it; they are not within a prayer of hitting 800,000 in 10 years. I do not think there is anyone in this chamber who believes that they can hit 800,000 new dwellings in 10 years. There is not a chance that will happen, particularly because they have now picked all the low-hanging fruit, and where are we at? We are at 50,000 approvals a year – not houses, approvals. Fifty thousand approvals a year – the target is 80,000 a year. We have grabbed all the low-hanging fruit – that has all come in, do not worry – and every bit of work from here gets harder, because you have got to get into industry reform. You have got to look at the power of the CFMEU. You have got to make sure that you have decreased the friction on housing transactions. You have got to make sure that it is easier for people to downsize, to release the land we need to build more houses.

But what you have, due to the vertical fiscal imbalance in the Federation that our founding fathers so wisely set up back in 1901, is a systemic problem with states having all the spending responsibility and the feds having all the taxing powers. So up there they get to have a brain fart and write a cheque and say, ‘Happy days; on you go.’ But at the state government level you are faced with the very real and difficult task of housing people, educating people, ensuring people are healthy and building the roads, but you do not get the ability to tax income or profits. Income and profits are the easiest things to tax. They also happen to be the fairest things to tax.

But what we have is a situation in Australia where state governments are left grabbing up whatever tax – and typically levies – they can. They are not taxes that necessarily lend themselves to being progressive regimes. The friction that attaches to property transactions now is so high that you are seeing people refuse to sell, simply because of the taxation impact. So in just the same way you have people invested in housing for tax-driven reasons, you have now got people staying invested in housing or staying in their house, even though they would prefer to downsize, for a tax-driven reason. That is a real problem. And it is undoubtedly the case – you travel the nation, and it is undoubtedly the case – that the mood has soured on Victoria, and lots and lots of people are talking about this being a high property tax jurisdiction. If you speak to people in the property industry, as I do, there is no doubt that that is the perception. It does not matter whether it is the reality now; the perception is that Victoria is a high property tax jurisdiction, and it is unfortunate. I do not blame any state government for grabbing the tax revenue where they can because of the way Canberra siphons it all in and doles it out so inefficiently. But the reality is that if you are going to improve the circumstances for residents and people seeking houses in Victoria, you have got to improve the circumstances for the property industry.

So what should the state government be doing in addition to their permit reforms? Yes, it is easier to get a permit – good result. Yes, there is a bit of deregulation. Sometimes you do not need a permit at all – good result. I applaud it. But we need the micro-economic reforms. Where is the real deregulation? Where is the targeted skilled migration? Where are the requests going to the feds saying, ‘Well, if we’ve got to build 800,000 houses, why don’t we get ourselves 100,000 builders?’ That is the sort of targeted, sensible immigration reform we would like to see. Despite much of the hysteria of the Senator Nampijinpa Price’s of the world, we actually do need to see an uplift in migration if we are going to have any chance of being able to deliver the housing stock that this state needs.

Make no mistake, the national housing issue is a $290 billion problem – that is a fifth of Australia’s economy. It is a $290 billion problem if you look out towards 2040, which is exactly where we should be looking. It is a massive, massive problem. It cannot be solved by government alone. It cannot be solved by any level of government alone. You need the private sector on board. You need to unleash the potential of not just government. We can talk – and I do not have time for it today – at great length about the failures of the Big Build program, but you have got to be able to unleash the talent, the capital, the skills and the expertise to be able to deliver a functioning building sector. We need more research and development from the state government. We need supply chain harmonisation. We need changes to the regulations to make it easier to get the inputs into the Victorian housing sector, and we need the state government to not be competing with the housing sector with all of its infrastructure projects. The infrastructure book is overblown, the housing book is badly, badly underdone and the very real effects of that are being felt every day by the homeless people who are crowded into my electorate of Ringwood.

Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (17:31): It gives me great pleasure to rise this evening in support of the member for Werribee’s matter of public importance (MPI), fantastic member that he is, and that is:

That this house affirms the importance of housing to Victorians and supports the Allan Labor government’s target of 800,000 homes over 10 years, the reforms underpinning it and the skilled workforce that will deliver it.

Victoria’s housing statement is about more than just building homes, although that is obviously an incredibly important component of it. I think we can all agree that the building of affordable homes and increasing stock to make homes more affordable is something that is incredibly important, but it is also about sharing the load. It is also about sharing the load that has been taken disproportionately by those areas that I represent, from areas like the member for Werribee represents, and indeed areas like the member for Point Cook, the member for Laverton and the member for Cranbourne out in the south-east represent. Those outer suburbs have disproportionately taken the load – and Yan Yean – of housing growth over the past 20 years. So this housing statement saying that 70 per cent of new dwellings, new homes, will be built in established areas near existing amenity – existing public transport in particular – and schools is something that I know is incredibly important and incredibly popular with my constituents, particularly in the Tarneit end.

We know that the City of Wyndham will grow by another 120,000 people over the next, I think, two decades or three decades. We understand that. But places like Tarneit and places like Manor Lakes cannot shoulder the bulk of that load over the next 20 years. They cannot shoulder the bulk of these 800,000 new homes over the next 20 years. The former Minister for Planning is sitting at the table and before he goes off – I am not having a go at him – there were precinct structure plans that were approved during his time out in the west, Tarneit North in my patch is one in particular, that I think were unfortunately planned incredibly poorly by council town planners. And then a lack of oversight from the department has meant that we have PSPs out in the west that we are now trying to retrofit infrastructure to. I can tell you from experience that trying to get a bus route through the Tarneit North PSP to make sure that people have basic amenity like basic public transport to get to the shops or to get to school is incredibly challenging because it has been planned so poorly. The cost to the state to retrofit that infrastructure is enormous, when we have parts of our city with existing amenity that can take and shoulder the load of some of the population growth that we are obviously going to encounter over the coming decades.

From my point of view, anyway, one of the most important parts of this housing statement and of Plan for Victoria is sharing the load, as we perhaps should have been for some time.

I have done a bit of reading today, watched some press conferences and also listened to the member for Polwarth’s contribution. The member for Brighton in particular and the member for Polwarth are frankly displaying what despicable frauds they are. Out of one side of their mouths they tell Victorians – and they tell young Victorians in particular, who see no end in sight to their aspirations to own a home – that they will support them into their first home whilst opposing every single project that may give them the capacity to do so and in particular that will give them the capacity to do so near where they grew up, near where their parents live and near amenity: near public transport, near schools, near shops and near roads. Whilst they say that they are going to help Victorians get into their first homes, they oppose their capacity to do it at every single turn. In fact I believe the member for Brighton may have called the projects and the activity centre slated for his local area an abomination. Letting young people have some affordable housing near a train station, near a tram – God help us – near a beach and near where their parents live is apparently an abomination. Every Victorian with the aspiration of owning their own home should look at that press conference and should read that media release or that article before they go to the ballot box in 2026.

The member for Gippsland South posed the question, as it says it at the bottom of this MPI: what reforms? Well, we will go through some reforms. Firstly, the direction, the promise or the understanding, as part of that housing statement, that 70 per cent of new dwellings will come within existing suburbs that can shoulder the load and that have amenity: that is a reform. Making it easier for builders, buyers and renovators to get permits: that is a reform. I agree with the member for Ringwood: you cannot sleep, bathe and raise a family in an approval. We need to make it easier to be able to get those permits that we need to be able to build more housing. Slashing stamp duty for off-the-plan apartments and townhouses, which will be amazing for those activity centres and those projects that are slated for Brighton, Sandringham and the middle suburbs of the east, is helping first home buyers and builders with $10,000.

I know that the federal government has had a productivity summit recently up in Canberra, but the productivity in the domestic building sector is slothful. Ten months to build a new home is slothful, and it is for a few reasons. I think we have got some levers to pull. Workforce is one of them, without a shadow of a doubt, and a skills shortage is one of them. A lack of innovation is another, and the time it takes to approve these new projects is another. I think governments, both state and federal, have some levers to pull there in terms of skilled migration and in terms of some cutting of regulation or some streamlining of regulation to be able to get these projects and these houses built quicker. That is incredibly important. If we wish to reach a target of 800,000 homes over the next 10 years, we are going to have to improve productivity within that sector, and all levels of government – I will even throw local government in here, but they are usually the problem – have to work together to improve productivity, innovation and supply, of workforce as well as materials, within that sector.

I have spoken about the 70–30 split within the housing statement. Wyndham is expected to get 120,000 new homes as part of this, which is still one of the higher targets, but I would hate to think what that would have been without the commitment for 70 per cent of new dwellings to be in existing locations near amenity, because I can tell you right now between Tarneit West and Melton there is no amenity; it is rock and thistle and unproductive agricultural land.

So we cannot just continue as a state and as a society to build medium-density housing in greenfield sites away from duplicated roads that you can get around on, away from metro rail with enough capacity on it to carry those new residents, without schools, without shopping centres – without all those basic things that make a place livable.

As I said, I went out and spoke to my community about this, particularly those in Tarneit. They do struggle with an amenity deficit. Our government is working hard every single day to try and bridge the gap of that deficit, but it is there. It exists because we have planned estates, PSPs and suburbs without keeping in mind that people need that basic amenity to live the life that they would like to.

I could go on and on and on about this. This bill, if nothing else, is about sharing the load between those established suburbs like Brighton and my place of Tarneit.

Wayne FARNHAM (Narracan) (17:41): I am pleased to rise today on the matter of public importance (MPI). When it came through I had to check the date. I actually thought it was an April Fool’s joke, but apparently not. This is what we are here to talk about – ‘That this house affirms the importance of housing to Victorians’ – and the first line is the one that I am going to talk to at the moment.

Now, I am glad the member for Tarneit actually corrected the member for Werribee on a couple of facts, and it was quite interesting, especially around the precinct structure plans. The member for Werribee came out pretty hard on the former planning minister, the member for Bulleen, saying that he created the PSPs, he did this and he did that. How it worked was the councils actually did the work.

Members interjecting.

Wayne FARNHAM: You are absolutely clueless about what you are talking about. The councils did the work on the PSPs, along with Planning Victoria. The minister signed off on what councils wanted, and that is a very important point.

Members interjecting.

Wayne FARNHAM: That shows you how clueless the other side is when it comes to the history of this state. The member for Werribee also talked about the lack of investment from the federal government between 2010 and 2014. It is true; you are right. The federal government from 2010 to 2013 was the Gillard Labor government. It was not a Liberal government, it was the Gillard Labor government.

John Lister: Members are required to be –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have not called the member for Werribee yet.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Tarneit, 10 minutes. Member for Werribee, on a point of order.

Member for Tarneit withdrew from chamber.

John Lister: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, I just wanted to clarify that I said ‘the federal Liberal–National government’ in my contribution, and members are required to be accurate.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is not a point of order, member for Werribee, and you should know that. It was going so well, and I expect everyone to continue quietly.

Wayne FARNHAM: It is good that we get those facts cleared up before we start, but let us talk about the government’s actual target: 800,000 homes over 10 years, which is in this MPI. In the first two years, the government is behind – not even close to the target. Look, I understand targets. I get that, but make your targets a bit more factual than aspirational. If the government had done their research before they set this target and opened themselves up to fail on the target, they would have known the most houses that were built since 1990 was in 2017, and that was 75,000 homes in 2017. That was before the ramp-up of the big build. So in 2017 there was the most homes ever built in Victoria – 75,000 homes. On average from 1990 to today it is 46,000 homes. If I was going to be the government and set a target, I would not have done it at 80,000 and made myself look foolish at this point in time, because that is what is happening at the moment. Even the Premier today in question time cheered and said, ‘We have delivered 60,000.’ It is 20,000 under their actual target. If I take as gospel what the Premier said in question time today, that they have delivered 60,000 over the last two years, that is 46,000 homes short of what their target is set at.

Now, the government can use the spin. They can say, ‘No, no. We’re saying 800,000 over 10 years now.’ The original commitment was 80,000 homes a year for 10 years. That was in the original press release, and I am more than happy for any member of that side to correct me if I am wrong, but they know I am right, and that is why they are not going to interject on this statement. The government talks about – again, going back to the first line – ‘That this house affirms the importance of housing to Victorians’.

I affirm that home ownership is important. I believe in it, and I believe our younger Victorians should have an opportunity to own a home. But that is not the government’s mindset. The previous Premier, Premier Andrews, actually said Victorians prefer to rent than buy – his statement, not mine. I do not believe that for one minute. I hear the government spruik all the time build to rent. They talk about housing affordability, but they spruik build to rent. They do not want home ownership. Every mindset from this government is about and every statement they put out is talking about rent. What about ownership? What about giving millennials and gen Zs the opportunity to own a home? But they do not have the opportunity under this government. Millennials and gen Zs now have the lowest opportunity to buy a house that they have had in the history of this state because of the taxes attached to property, the taxes attached to building. When we talk about the 60-odd new taxes that have been introduced into this Parliament since 2014, half of those are attached to the construction industry. The government have lost sight of aspiration, and our young Victorians have lost sight of actually owning a home. They have given up hope. If you talk to a lot of young Victorians, they would rather go on a holiday than save up for a home, because they believe they will never get the opportunity to buy a home.

As for the precincts that have been announced by the government, I am going to touch on them too, because that is an important part of their whole housing strategy. So let us talk about that. Let us talk about the precincts. The simple fact of the matter is that it is not a housing policy, it is a tax policy, and I will tell you why it is a tax policy. It is a tax policy because when those precincts go up, the rezoning will trigger a windfall gains tax. It is a tax policy. The development community has come out and said that it is not viable. The government are not going to build these high-rise developments. The government will not build them, so when the government comes out and says, ‘We’re going to build,’ that is a furphy. It is the development community that has to build that, but the development community is saying brownfield sites – honestly, mate.

Members interjecting.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member for Narracan can continue, but members at the table can have a chat outside the chamber if they like.

Wayne FARNHAM: So we have the development community saying that it is not viable to do brownfield development, so that is going to be problematic for the government.

Then the last part of this is ‘the reforms underpinning it and the skilled workforce that will deliver it’. That is a good statement, but I think we need to look at the facts of what is happening in the construction industry at the moment. Over the last 18 months we have lost nearly 25,000 tradies. That is our skilled workforce that are there to deliver these homes. We talk about training, we talk about TAFE. I hear the government talk about it all the time: ‘We’re investing in TAFE.’ That is great, but we are only having a 50 per cent completion rate for apprentices. There is another dent in our skilled workforce. Then let us look at the construction industry as a whole and let us look at the amount of builders that have gone into liquidation. In the last two years 28 per cent of all liquidations in Australia were in construction.

A lot of those, a fair portion of those, are actually in Victoria. So we are losing the builders, we are losing the skilled tradesmen and we are losing the apprentices. Where are we going to get the skilled workforce to deliver these homes? Now, everybody in this chamber knows I am a great fan of tradies, having been one myself – having been an apprentice, having been a tradie, having been a builder as well. Unfortunately, this matter of public importance, as great as it is to put it in writing and make it all nice and pretty and spruik about it in the chamber, is undeliverable. There is nothing in this matter of public importance that the government actually has delivered: ‘We’ve talked about it, we’ve spruiked about it, but we haven’t delivered it.’ So it is one thing to talk about it, but delivery is a totally different thing.

In closing – and the member for Mornington touched on it earlier – I did, just before I got in this place, deliver four units in my local electorate for homeless women particularly. I am very proud of that and very proud of my community that also pitched in on that – $300,000 in local and in-kind contributions, most of that labour and materials. It was an absolutely fantastic effort to help a growing cohort of homelessness in our community, which is women over 50. It is a problem; it is a bad problem. And people trying to escape family violence have an 18-month delay – now, that is a fail. That is a fail from this government. And to be honest, with the matter of public importance today, as I said, I thought it was April Fool’s Day – it is a joke.

Katie HALL (Footscray) (17:51): I am very pleased as the Parliamentary Secretary for Homes to be making a contribution to this important matter of public importance debate, and I think that there is no more important issue than affordability of housing and the importance of housing as the fabric of our society. I felt quite a few value judgements, sadly, coming through this debate from those opposite. I have a huge respect for the previous member speaking, but I would like to reflect on his commentary around renting. Now, there can and there should be dignity in renting, and this government is doing everything in its power, with more than 100 reforms, to make renting fairer. In my community, in my electorate of Footscray, I represent one of the youngest electorates in this place. We have almost twice the state average of renters living in the suburb of Footscray.

One of the other value judgements I have heard throughout this debate is this sort of criticism of apartments and apartment stock or townhouses – that if you cannot afford to buy a three-bedroom house on a block of land that somehow diminishes your status. Well, I feel like places where we should be building more homes are in areas like mine, where we are benefiting massively from the investment of the Metro Tunnel. Footscray is a fine place to be building high-quality apartments. Of course predominantly we have renters moving into a lot of those apartments. I am very proud to represent those renters in my electorate. I am very proud of the reforms we have made, and renting is an entirely valid choice. We do not have to choose. I was a long-term renter, I lived in many a share house and rental property across Melbourne, and we did not have the standards then that we do now and the protections that we do now. I am really proud of the reforms being led by the minister at the table to make renting fairer in Victoria, because across Victoria almost 30 per cent of Victorians rent, and so it is only appropriate that we create the best consumer affairs environment for those renters and that we encourage high-quality builds in locations close to public transport and well serviced by infrastructure and public open space to create great precincts and great communities.

In my electorate of Footscray – and I am glad the former Minister for Planning is at the table – we have seen the contrast of what those opposite do when they have the opportunities and the levers in place of power, and of course I speak –

John Lister interjected.

Katie HALL: Thank you, member for Werribee – about the Joseph Road precinct, because of course there were no developer contributions provided as part of that massive precinct. Many of those buildings are still half empty, but we had to take those developers to court to make sure that developer contributions were paid so that council could build the roads and the infrastructure that we needed in that newest precinct in Footscray.

Not only do we believe in apartment and townhouse living, we believe in doing it properly, and that is the big distinction. I hear the member for Brighton use the word ‘outrage’ constantly – the outrage that people might want to live in that community and live in an apartment if that is what they can afford. Yet those opposite were very happy to put massive 40-storey towers in my electorate but not have the developers cough up the contributions to ensure that we had the community infrastructure and the public open space that every community should have the dignity of having, and now we have to retrofit it into that space. We also know that people who are experiencing challenges even getting into a rental property need the support, whether it be through social housing or affordable housing, to have the opportunity to live in communities where public transport is increasingly important if they do not have a car.

I was enormously proud recently of attending a really innovative social housing development that has just been completed in my electorate of Footscray, in West Footscray on Summerhill Road. It was the Lions Club of Footscray – I would like to acknowledge their contribution of a large block of land. We had a great local social housing provider and then of course a contribution from the Allan Labor government to build beautiful apartments for women over the age of 50, who we understand are an increasingly vulnerable cohort of people looking for a place to call home. These are beautiful homes; they have got a large courtyard and balconies. The women that live there have really built a beautiful community together, and that is housing with dignity; that is the sort of housing that we support and that we believe in. Of course that reform was led by the incredible former member for Richmond, whose life was dedicated to social housing. The $5.3 billion Big Housing Build is his enduring legacy and something that we are continuing to see the benefits of in communities across Victoria.

Whether you need social housing or perhaps affordable housing or you are looking for a place to rent that has energy efficiency and where you can have a pet and the dignity of renting as well, we are making sure that whatever your financial circumstances are, you can live in a well-connected, well-planned community or housing, and that is exactly what the reforms announced today are designed to do. Of course consultation is continuing on those reforms, because community feedback is essential.

I know where I live one of the issues that I have been really concerned about is land banking by developers. That is something that I am going to continue to raise as an issue, because there needs to be activation of these large sites that have been left dormant for long periods of time for the purposes of permit flipping so that when the market improves, the value of the land improves if it has a permit attached to it. To me that is unacceptable.

As a government I am very proud of our target of 800,000 homes. Those opposite have mocked us, but it is certainly a great thing to have the aspiration. We are certainly building more homes than any other state in the country and doing that in a well-planned, well-considered way. But just on renters, the almost 30 per cent of Victorians who rent have had their backs turned on them by the Liberal opposition. If they ever seek to get into government again, well, I am sure those renters will turn their backs on them.