Tuesday, 17 February 2026

 Colin BROOKS (Bundoora – Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing, Minister for Creative Industries) (15:09): My residents are concerned about the operation of a pending social and affordable housing development in Greensborough in my electorate. It has been reported that Together Housing (Victoria) Ltd has been funded to deliver this development, which consists of more than 200 ‍dwellings. This organisation is somehow registered with the social housing regulator but does not seem to have ever run social housing. It appears to have no staff, no income and no assets or expenses. Remember that in Victoria only not-for-profits can register as community housing organisations. Its directors are listed on the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission website as Brodie Commens, Ryan Slocombe and Stephen McDonough, and Terrene Searle is the secretary and public officer. All just happen to also be principals or directors at private capital investment firm Tetris Capital. I note that Together Housing has engaged a longstanding community housing provider to actually run the housing at Greensborough.

I believe the creation of Together Housing Ltd can be one of two things. Firstly, it might be a small group of people with experience in funding housing developments who are wanting to simply apply their skills to help people in housing. If this is the case, I am not sure why they would not have joined an existing community housing organisation to help out, but this is one possible scenario. The other option is that Together Housing is an artifice to allow people to make profit from the funding that is available for not-for-profits to provide social and affordable housing. This would be completely unacceptable, and I am going to devote significant effort and time to exposing any money that flows back to these individuals or Tetris, whether it be through management fees, financing arrangements or any other means.