Tuesday, 12 May 2026

 Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (10:33): I rise today to make my contribution on the 2024–25 financial and performance outcomes from the PAEC, Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. Of course I cannot help but go to the section dealing with the relocation of public housing towers and their residents. Really, in a modern economy and in a modern state like Victoria is supposed to be, it is something that we should be priding ourselves on, the efficiency and the effectiveness with which we can house our own population. Some of the statistics coming out of that particular budget period are a real indictment on this government. We have heard in recent months, and certainly in the last week with the state budget coming out, that this government has spent an enormous amount of money. We are $200 billion in debt, and it seems to me in the public commentary the only thing this government can hang its hat on is building train stations. We heard just prior to this segment in the chamber members of Parliament talking about how they are getting more train services for their communities. Of course those of us in country Victoria would dispute that greatly, with my own electorate barely having a train operating at all for the last six months, and when they do, they are crowded, cramped, minus food services, running late and replaced with buses often.

But back to housing: the simple facts are that this Victorian government talks the talk but fails to deliver on action when it comes to housing. The sad facts on our public housing numbers are that back before the Big Housing Build started, prior to 2020, we had around 88,000 public housing dwellings, and in that we had a range between one- and five-bedroom homes, and our public housing waiting list was 30,000 families.

Today, at the time of this report, we have some 65,000 Victorian families either waiting for a home or in a home that is not suitable for their habitation. It might be that they need three bedrooms and they only have one or they are up a flight of stairs when they do not have accessibility through wheelchairs or other mobility devices. So that is a huge concern: we are failing the homeless and people getting into the most basic of housing. That also does not include the six-month backlog of families waiting to get onto that list. There are many thousands, potentially, of other families sitting, not yet even processed to the list.

Then the government came out with its promise to redevelop, between now and 2050, the 44 public housing towers. The report highlights that some 1063 families have been identified for pretty much immediate relocation, of which over a two-year period the government has only managed to relocate approximately half, at 625. The question we ask is: why is the government making these great claims for relocation but singlehandedly failing to progress the capacity of doing that? We heard last year in the Parliament that the government is so short of homes – as I said, in a five-year, multibillion-dollar bill they have only increased the housing stock by a mere few thousand, which has not touched the sides. But relocating public housing towers is like a big Tetris block movement game; you have got to have somewhere to move the families in order to relocate and to redevelop the sites, and that is a really obvious part of the planning process, which this report identifies the government has singularly failed to do. We learned last year in the Parliament that in order to try and speed up this process and to create the extra homes in the system this government went to the private market and offered landlords up to 10 per cent more than what the going rate in the community was for that accommodation. So we have a government that says it cares about homes and housing Victorians, but at the same time it is shrinking the supply of homes in a massive way, and then for the most vulnerable in the state it is actually actively competing in the private market for the scarce amount of homes that are left. It is a huge concern. It has been highlighted in this PAEC report that we are just failing to deliver.

In the short time I have left, I would also point out that the government has continually allocated funds through this budgetary process for cooling of the public housing towers, which it has singly failed to do, considering that many of these towers will be in existence until at least 2050.