Wednesday, 18 March 2026

 Katie HALL (Footscray) (16:46): Wow. We have heard some good and some bad reflections in today’s grievance debate. I too join the grievance debate and I will get to what I am grieving about in a minute, but I would like to acknowledge the member for Mornington, who made a thoughtful contribution about public housing and the importance of homelessness services. That is actually the first time I have heard a member of the Liberal Party speak at that length with that sort of compassion for vulnerable people. In contrast, the member for Mildura before was conflating this government’s position with mental health challenges in the regions and a war that we have nothing to do with in the Middle East and the impact on petrol and diesel prices.

Jade Benham interjected.

The SPEAKER: The member for Mildura will come to order.

Jade Benham interjected.

The SPEAKER: The member for Mildura can leave the chamber.

Member for Mildura withdrew from chamber.

Katie HALL: Saying that this government does not care is appalling. I was really disappointed to hear that contribution because we have a great number of regional members on this side of the chamber who care deeply about the impact of this global situation on farmers and farming communities. It went from criticism of the suburbs, saying, ‘Why would anyone want to live in Cheltenham?’ to talking about really serious issues of mental health and this war in Iran that was most certainly not started from Victoria. To say that we are not concerned is appalling, and I think it was a pretty shameful contribution.

My grievance contribution today is adjacent to those of the member for Mornington and the member for Laverton around housing. I am very proud of our record on housing. I am proud that as a government we are doing something really brave in reforming the way we build housing in Melbourne and across Victoria. I am also proud of the work we are doing in social and public housing. To pick up the point of the member for Mornington, there is a lot to do in social housing, but the Victorian people should be assured that on this side of the chamber we care deeply about vulnerable people and we care deeply about housing affordability in what is now a really tough time for people in terms of their cost-of-living situations at home and the budget decisions that every family is having to make. The opposition’s position has been consistent for some time – for decades – and that is that young people will continue to be locked out of the housing market in Victoria because there is an unwillingness to build in the middle ring of suburbs. Every great city in the world has medium-density housing in the middle ring and the inner suburbs and is not scared of it. So today I am really proud that we have continued our work on the activity centres program. It is hard, it is detailed and complex policy work, but that is what this housing crisis requires.

I know that young people in my electorate of Footscray are struggling to get into the housing market. There is not enough supply. I am pleased that we are doing the work in the activity centres, in places like my community, to make sure that people that have grown up in Footscray, whose families live in Footscray, can continue to live there and are not forced out beyond the urban growth boundary – which is where the opposition would like us to be building housing – to places where there is no infrastructure. We do not ever want to be in a situation where we are continually retrofitting infrastructure in places that have none. We have a richness of infrastructure in Melbourne, but for too long it has been locked up, and young people have been locked out. So today we have released another 25 of our tram and train activity centre proposals to reform the way we deliver housing in this state. I commend the Minister for Planning on her detailed work, because people deserve to have the opportunity to live where they grew up, near their friends, near their families and close to where they work.

I heard a caller on the ABC this week talk about a teacher who was travelling from Melton to Blackburn to get to work, because the teacher could not afford to live on the other side of town. I thought, one of the things we keep talking about is housing supply and the importance of delivering more homes so that people have the opportunity to either downsize, if perhaps they have been in a bigger house and the kids have moved out, or to move into a house for a growing family. It is easy to say all of these things, but it is actually a lot harder to deliver them. Luckily for the people of Victoria the Allan Labor government has a vision, and we are doing exactly that: we are getting on with the job of delivering more housing.

The Premier has spoken a lot about millennials. I know for a lot of my friends, millennials, it is a real challenge to get out there and to be able to buy your own home. Many people also feel like they are trapped in a cycle of renting, and we have done so much. The Minister for Consumer Affairs is leading a reform agenda, where we have delivered more than 100 reforms to make renting fairer. I know in my community in the suburb of Footscray alone we have more than double the state average of renters. We have a young community that wants to live in Melbourne’s inner west, but we need to deliver the opportunities for those young people to get on and buy a new home. That is why we have undertaken extensive legislative reform across the consumer affairs, planning, transport and building portfolios to provide a solid foundation for the future of Victoria. We have legislated changes to the Victorian Building Authority, which is now the Building and Plumbing Commission, to provide greater consumer protections to weed out dodgy builders. We have streamlined the approval process to essentially prevent nimbyism from blocking housing developments where they need to be. But we know that communities deserve high-quality builds as well. People deserve a high-quality public realm and high-quality urban design, and we are ensuring that with our design standards.

We have introduced the tram and train zone activity centres, which the opposition have said, if they ever have the enormous privilege of being in government, they will scrap. The intent of that policy reform is to ensure that people can live close to transport and services. We have legislated more than 100 rental reforms, making Victoria the most renter-friendly state in the nation. We have begun work on Australia’s largest housing project – the one the member for Mildura referred to when she was saying, ‘Why would anyone want to live there?’ It is the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL), and it is going to transform the way Victorians live and move around Melbourne. As someone who travelled from Footscray to get to Monash University when I was studying, it was a pretty hard slog in my 1982 Mitsubishi Sigma. It was not a great car, but my poor old man rebuilt that engine a couple of times. That public transport connection to our largest university is absolutely crucial, not just for the people that live on that side of town but for people across Melbourne.

There is so much more that we are doing. What this all means, as the member for Polwarth graciously mentioned in October last year, is that Victoria is building more homes than any other state. I am not sure that he had all of the numbers at hand, but I can fill the chamber in on where we are at. In the 12 ‍months to January 2026 there were 52,000 residential building approvals in Victoria, which is 10,000 more than Queensland and 2200 more than New South Wales. In the 12 months to September 2025 there were 55,000 residential building commencements and 54,000 completions. Not only are we building more homes, but the Allan Labor government’s reforms will also mean that we are building homes faster and to a higher standard. Victoria currently rates second in the nation for the shortest average time from approval to completion. With completion time sitting at around 9.8 months, this is in contrast to New South Wales, where the average completion time is just over 12 months. Completion times have continued on a downward trend over the last few years. Since 2023 they have reduced by about a month for detached houses, by about three months for townhouses and by about 1½ months for apartments.

The only transport policy those opposite have is to cancel the SRL. I think they referred to the Metro Tunnel project as a sham. Scrapping the SRL would mean that thousands of homes in developed communities close to schools, jobs, services and universities, as I mentioned, would go. ‘Aspiration’ used to be in the Liberal Party’s motto, but unless you aspire to live hours from your job, your mates and your family, you are on your own when it comes to home ownership under the Liberal Party’s so-called plan. Fundamentally, our housing strategy is about giving Victorians choice. Should someone growing up in Footscray decide they want to live locally, or maybe they want to live over in Malvern or Brighton, that is up to them. The Allan Labor government will make sure they have the opportunity to do so. Little has changed, actually, since the Kennett era, and even today, after years of political irrelevancy and lack of vision, the Liberals just cannot bring themselves to put the interests of young Victorians ahead of this stale policy position that they cannot possibly allow anyone to live in the middle ring of suburbs – that everything must stay as it was in the 1950s.

We have delivered a smart plan for the best city in the world to grow in a fair way, and fairness is at the core of this. We have delivered a plan to tackle the intergenerational disadvantage that has emerged in the housing market, which is a national problem. It is a national problem that we all have to come to grips with. If we continue going the way we are going, young people will always be locked out. That is not the kind of state or country I want to live in. I want to know that young people will have every opportunity to buy a home if they should wish to, and if they want to rent, that they are going to have a fair environment to do so as well. That is what I am so proud of with this government: we have done the hard policy work. The work over on the other side has been absolutely lazy. It is exactly the same as it was 20 years ago, 50 years ago – let us just keep pushing people further out, where they have no infrastructure, and let us hope for the best. That is not the Labor Party’s way.