Thursday, 1 September 2022

Bills

Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Ms SHING:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (09:54): This is the Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022. The purposes of this bill are to provide for Homes Victoria to provide community impact statements with certain applicants for a possession order; to provide for Homes Victoria to specify certain areas to be common areas; to amend the Housing Act 1983 and to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 in relation to the provision of affordable housing; to amend the Housing Act in relation to the functions and constitution of Homes Victoria, formerly known to most of us as the director of housing, and to establish an advisory board; to extend the default commencement date for the Social Services Regulation Act 2021; to extend the operation of regulations under the Supported Residential Services (Private Proprietors) Act 2010; and to make some other consequential amendments.

We want to ask some questions in committee about appointment to this new Homes Victoria advisory board. How will that be shaped? How will the government go about this? What will be the criteria? I think these are legitimate questions, and I put the minister on notice that we will ask some points around that. There are also questions about the joint ventures that are proposed and how these will operate. Will the surpluses or any profits or uplift be directed into Treasury or will they be siphoned off for other purposes? If so, what purposes, under what criteria? How will that operate and who will have control of that? We will seek some clarity on some of those points.

There are issues about the position of tenants. I notice a number of points have been raised by the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee concerning these issues, and I have not seen a response from the minister. It may be that I do not have the very latest, but SARC said it would write to the minister seeking further information as to whether or not clauses 4 and 5, to the extent they permit or require VCAT to have regard to de-identified evidence provided by one party to a proceeding, are compatible with the charter. If the minister has responded, she may want to make that letter available.

I should also point out some broader comments around social housing at the moment. We strongly support greater options and models for social housing. We do depart from the government with respect to the special arrangements that have been put in on planning requirements. We believe councils and local communities ought to have a say on the future of their municipalities. I just want to make it clear that in that respect we have some different views from the government.

I also want to make clear that we think there is no provision made in the Housing Act for disallowance. We believe there should be opportunities to disallow things that are done by Homes Victoria, and I will distribute some amendments. We propose to insert new provisions to allow for disallowance.

Opposition amendments circulated by Mr DAVIS pursuant to standing orders.

Mr DAVIS: The short story with this amendment is it inserts a set of arrangements that allow for disallowance by either house of Parliament. A number of these bodies have become very distant over time, unaccountable bodies, and it is time that they were made more accountable to the Parliament and the broader community. In that respect we think the disallowance amendment is a justified amendment. It is a moderate amendment. Why it is not part of the normal regime as it is now I do not know, but the minister may want to make comment on that and why she either supports or does not support the approach that we have adopted with this amendment.

With those comments, I do not want to drag this on any longer than is required, but I will make the point again that we see that the provision of public and social housing has been largely a failure by this government. Waiting lists have increased massively since 2014. Those waiting lists reflect very unfortunate outcomes for so many people. We are prepared to look at a range of different models for provision. However, I do make this point: the model should be accountable and there should be proper arrangements in place to hold the bureaucrats and others to account.

As I have also said, we do believe that where new stock is built, that should have the planning involvement of the local community and the local council. We do not agree with special amendments VC187 and VC190 and the like, which provide all power to the minister to make whatever planning decisions they want and also provide in a number of cases the ability to even proceed without consultation. We think that is an overreach, and we think accountability is very important here—hence, by the way, the disallowance amendment.

Mr GEPP (Northern Victoria) (10:01): It delights me, I have got to say, to be able to rise to talk about the Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022. No, this is not a valedictory because I get to talk for the next 15 minutes about public housing, but it is a delight to be able to do so. I have spoken many times in this place about the need in Victoria for public housing, social housing and affordable housing and how important it is for people on low incomes who are struggling in a variety of different ways to be supported, because if you have not got a roof over your head, if you have not got that basic human right, then you will struggle in every aspect of your life, and we know that. We also know that if you are in housing that is unaffordable and it is taking up the lion’s share of your income just to maintain that roof over your head, that leads to a series of other socio-economic problems for you.

There is no greater cause in my view in this place than for us to pursue the very basic right for all of our citizens to have affordable housing—an affordable roof over their head. It gives you dignity, it gives you opportunity and it gives you a basic standard, and if we cannot get that right then everything else we talk about is just white noise. It is white noise to those people who have not got the opportunity to go home at the end of their day, whatever that day has entailed. If they have got nowhere to go or the place that they are going to is so unaffordable that it causes stress in all other aspects of their life, then, as a wise person once said back in 1970, ‘Houston, we have a problem’.

I am thrilled; as my time in this place draws to a close, it causes me to reflect on my time here and all of the issues that we have dealt with—and we have dealt with many, many hundreds of different issues while I have been in this place. This one is near and dear to my heart and the hearts of so many people on all sides of the chamber, but there is nothing that gives me a greater sense of pride, being part of a Labor government, than the efforts that we have made in this space during my time here. I think it is an absolute credit to people like the Honourable Richard Wynne, the member for Richmond, who is also finishing up his time in this place in a couple of months time, given his outstanding work and the legacy that he will leave Victoria with due to his efforts and the efforts of his staff and his departments as the Minister for Housing.

Of course the mantle has been taken up by the Honourable Danny Pearson, the new Minister for Housing, and, gee, hasn’t he got some energy. He is your classic, quintessential Eveready bunny and he goes at a million miles an hour. But it really is at the core of who Labor are that we have invested so much in this space, and we will continue to focus on housing and affordable housing as key pillars of the work that we do.

This bill is important because it allows Homes Victoria to support Victorians by providing a variety of options. It is not just one size fits all. There is not just one type of housing. There are a variety of different needs out there, and it is important that Homes Victoria is given the opportunity to tailor the product to fit the needs of the people that we are providing housing for—that diversity of needs that exists across our community. Homes Victoria is providing housing on a continuum from delivering a Housing First approach for people experiencing homelessness to more stable and secure housing for low-income Victorians right through to affordable housing options for low to moderate income Victorians, including essential workers.

I know that in my electorate of Northern Victoria, when I talk to employers right throughout the biggest electorate in the state, they all say the same thing: ‘There’s a labour shortage’. But even where we meet that labour need, the problem is we have got nowhere to house people. When you need to get workers to places like Mildura and Ouyen, right throughout the Mallee and right along the Murray River, places like Robinvale and Swan Hill—and I am talking about bigger towns—the problem that they have is that when they get the workers there, there is nowhere to house them. These sorts of efforts of Homes Victoria will be so important to economically assist those towns to remain vibrant and those businesses to remain viable.

I do want to talk a little bit about what we have done, because I think it is important that we continue to remind ourselves of the biggest commitment in this state’s history through the Big Housing Build: $5.3 billion. It is the biggest investment in social housing of anywhere in this nation, and it will deliver, upon its completion, more than 12 000 homes, including 2400 affordable homes for those who need them the most. Those numbers are staggering, but we also know that even if they were built tomorrow, we would still have more work to do. We have still got much more work to do. But what a wonderful commitment to the people of Victoria to say, ‘For you who are homeless, you who are on low incomes and you who have a series of issues that are impacting your life, we’re going to step up to the plate and we’re going to make the biggest investment in this state’s history into social housing because we understand the importance of putting a roof over your head’.

When I was preparing for this contribution, one of my bugbears—and I say ‘bugbear’, but I want to be clear and say from the outset that I do not apportion blame and I am not criticising anybody or any government, current or past—is I think there is still a big body of work that needs to be done in this space. As I have just talked about, $5.3 billion is the biggest investment in this state’s history, indeed in the nation.

I was a young boy growing up in public housing—and there are so many. I had dinner with a Victorian minister last night who also grew up in public housing. I will not name the minister—that is their story to tell, not mine—but we were talking about the kids that we lived with in our communities back then, and we were wondering how many of those kids have made it out of poverty, have made it out of social housing. With all of the money, all of the programs that governments of all colours and persuasions over the years have invested in this space, how many of those kids have made it out into a different life, or how many are still experiencing the intergenerational poverty and socio-economic gaps that come with being in a low-income environment?

We do not know the answer. We just do not know the answer. I do not know how many of the kids that I grew up with in the Flemington flats today are out of the social housing environment, how many have made it to a different lifestyle—whether they are renting or whether they are buying, whether they have got good jobs, whether they have education, whether they have got other health issues. There is no body of work that has been done that can tell us that, and I think there are still some challenges in this space for all of us to think about. We do spend billions and billions of dollars across this state and across the country in this space on programs—not just housing initiatives but in other social policy areas—for people who are living with poverty and living in challenging circumstances, and we just do not know. There has never been that body of work, and I think there is a challenge for us to actually commit to researching, finding out.

We know who these people are, we know all the children from those times and we know the people who are living in those circumstances today. And being able to see the impact of the public policies that we have put in place over a period of time, to see whether we are starting to really crack the egg of that intergenerational poverty and shifting the needle, moving the needle, on these things I think is an important part of the work going forward. Perhaps for those that remain in this place after the next election that might be an erstwhile endeavour, for a committee to start that body of work, because I think it is so crucially important that we understand. Many things that we do are based on the needs of today, and we understand that, but I am confident that the Andrews Labor government will be able to step up to the plate and deal with any issues that are thrown up by such a body of research.

I see the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep in the chamber. We understand the need to deal with the here and now but also the need to look into the future. There is some fantastic work that she has done in her portfolio, none better than the Best Start, Best Life initiatives. We understand that if we invest in our children today, tomorrow it will pay enormous dividends to the whole of the community because these kids will be far better educated. They will have far better opportunities in life. They will be far more productive in economic terms, but they will be better, well-rounded, adjusted people because they have had a plethora of opportunities that up until now they might not have had.

I am confident that we can do this body of work. I think it is such an important area of public policy for us to look into. I am confident that whatever challenges are identified through such a body of work, this government, this Parliament, will have the capacity to deal with them. As I said, out of everything that I have dealt with in this Parliament nothing has given me more pride than being able to vote for the Big Housing Build initiatives and many of the associated social policy areas attached to this. It has been an absolute privilege to speak on this bill today. As I was a little boy who grew up in the Flemington flats, I am so pleased that our elected leaders in this state are looking at kids who look like me, who were me, who are me, and delivering the best that they can for them.

Ms WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (10:16): I rise to speak on the Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022. Can I just say how very, very difficult it is to follow Mr Gepp speaking on housing, because in this chamber is there anybody who speaks with more conviction, pride and personal authority than Mr Gepp on their life in housing? Can I just say I did not have the opportunities that he had from housing, because we were just waiting to get in. I know that your neighbours, the people that you grew up with, should take a moment to be filled with enormous pride for the advocacy that you do on their behalf. The stories that you tell of pride in your community do sit with me and will continue to sit with me for years to come.

I am a little bit delighted that the Flemington flats will soon move into the Northern Metropolitan Region—sorry to the members for Western Metropolitan Region—because it is a community of enormous pride and resilience and with some of the very best people you would ever meet. You just need to ask the member for Essendon, because he will you tell you many, many times just how much he loves his community. I am going to talk for some time on this bill about my own experiences, because there is some key detail I want to get across today about just how significant this bill is. Social and affordable housing provides so many Victorians with the safety, dignity and security of a home, and this bill today only builds on our incredible work with the Big Housing Build and our commitment to expand an effective and sustainable social and affordable housing system.

I am really proud to be a member of the Andrews Labor government, a government that includes members like Mr Gepp and like Mr Richard Wynne, the powerhouse outgoing Minister for Housing. You just cannot go anywhere in this state without seeing the impact of his profound leadership and commitment to social and affordable and public housing. To you, Richard Wynne, I do owe a lot, and I am learning each and every day from the example that you set. They are just two people that love and speak with such passion and conviction on the importance of housing. There are so many more—others that have quiet stories to tell and others that will scream from the rooftops about the chance and the opportunities that have been afforded to them by investment in social and affordable housing and public housing.

I know that the Big Housing Build is special. It will build more than 12 000 new social and affordable homes, increase our stock by 10 per cent, create 10 000 jobs a year over four years, spend $1.25 billion in regional Victoria—and I know the member for Northern Victoria Mr Gepp is incredibly happy about the remarkable investment in regional Victoria—and of course it will boost regional economies. We have hit the halfway milestone in the unprecedented Big Housing Build, delivering more social and affordable homes to those who might need them right across our state. More than 6300 homes have been completed or are underway, many in the Northern Metropolitan Region, let me just say proudly, with more than $2.8 billion of invested funds already poured into new and secure homes under the program. Since the program was announced in November 2020 more than 1400 households have either moved or are getting ready to move into their brand new homes. The construction boom has resulted in 20 000 jobs across Victoria, creating a much-needed boost to the economy as we recover. Larger projects currently taking place across Victoria include the redevelopment of sites at Hawthorn, which will develop 200 homes; another 200 homes being built at Ascot Vale, not far from me; and 178 dwellings in Ashburton.

Back to regional Victoria, at least $1.25 billion is being invested to ensure the benefits of the Big Housing Build are spread right across our state. Large-scale developments are already underway, including 150 homes being delivered in Ballarat, 120 dwellings in Bendigo and 54 in East Geelong. This is on top of our commitment to build 1000 new public homes, the public housing renewal program, the family violence housing blitz and our groundbreaking ground lease model development. Importantly, 10 per cent of new dwellings will support Aboriginal Victorians to have culturally safe and self-determined housing options. We know a safe and secure home is the foundation of a good life, and we are building good-quality housing for those that need it most. This is real change.

I know the importance of safe and secure housing. As I said upon my appointment as Parliamentary Secretary for Housing, I come from very humble beginnings. I remember fondly my time moving from place to place to place, but not so fondly having half my childhood packed up in a box because ‘Why unpack, because we’re going to move again pretty soon’. To this day I still have that box with my special items, the things that remind me of a childhood lost in unstable and insecure homes. For me this is very, very close to my heart, and I think about how one day I will get to a home where I can unpack. I will get there, Mr Gepp. I will get there. So I speak of this with a bit of a trembling voice because it is very real to me and it is very dear to me. I have some big shoes to fill but an enormous passion and a lived experience that needs to be heard. Let me just say, we know that good-quality housing is great and incredibly urgent. While the Sheena of the 1980s was failed, the Sheena of the 2020s is going to do something about it, and I am just getting ready. I am just getting started.

Homes Victoria really have their work cut out for them. I met with them earlier this morning, and let me tell you, they are employing multiple approaches to boosting the supply of social and affordable housing throughout our state. There are significant investments that are transforming people’s lives, including in areas where we just need more homes. This bill will ensure that through Homes Victoria we can continue to boost the supply of modern, energy-efficient, affordable homes for Victorians most in need so they have a place to call home where they can live with dignity and security and maybe, just maybe, they get to unpack their boxes. That is the dream I have for them.

The Big Housing Build will boost the social housing supply by 10 per cent, but central to this also is sustainability. I have my work cut out for me, being the co-chair of the community consultative committee in North Melbourne, but one of the really important parts of that project and the redevelopment on Molesworth Street is sustainability. We have put our eyes and ears out to what works best when it comes to sustainability, and we are learning each and every day from what is happening in the ever-increasing innovative space of home sustainability.

I even recently went out to Nightingale 2 in Fairfield with the member for Northcote, Kat Theophanous, and saw this not-for-profit housing provider and the fact that the residents there have access to low-cost energy through a combination of solar panels and green power. And do you know what they have also got? They have got homes in that building set aside for essential and critical workers and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The folks involved in that are just made of the right stuff, so can I just give a quick shout-out to the folks at Nightingale. The Andrews Labor government has supported the sustainability of these buildings across Melbourne, and construction is underway for more homes in Preston.

Look, there is more to be said, so I am going to get to it, but I do want to talk about the fact that with these 10 000 new jobs right across our state we are creating employment opportunities throughout the Victorian community. But significant for me are the apprentices, the cadets and the trainees that will form 10 per cent of the work on these major projects. On top of that is the gender equity plan that will support the increase of women’s participation in the construction industry, helping address inequalities that have been exacerbated through the pandemic. We need more women in trades, and the gender equity plan is going some way to making that a reality. Hundreds of new jobs will be created for Aboriginal Victorians, people with a disability, social housing renters and people from diverse backgrounds.

I do often talk about all the various things I did before coming into this place, but one of them was working with residents of and also people on the waitlist for public housing to get apprenticeships and traineeships for their kids. Now, that was really special because they just had not had anybody reach out to them before and say, ‘We believe in the hopes for you and your children, and we reckon that a trade is right for you’. So I am hoping that somebody else has taken up those really proud conversations with residents and will continue to build more opportunities for apprentices and trainees right throughout these projects. There is a young trainee working in Brunswick West, and every time I pass that project I think about them and what they are doing there, because that position would not be there if not for the decisions made by the Andrews Labor government to invest in opportunities for young people here on our sites.

Also, remarkably, there is the establishment of Homes Victoria as a contemporary housing agency with a robust governance structure. This provides powers to build a more commercial way of operating Homes Victoria but also keeps at the forefront the objectives of the Housing Act 1983 to ensure that everybody in Victoria has adequate and appropriate housing at a price within his or her means. This will allow Homes Victoria to deliver housing on a continuum from social housing for the most vulnerable Victorians to affordable housing for low to moderate income earners, including our essential workers, who we value and honour each and every day.

The bill formalises the transition of the director of housing to Homes Victoria and establishes an independent skills-based Homes Victoria advisory board to provide strategic advice to the CEO of Homes Victoria and the minister. Our government has a longstanding commitment to increasing diversity on boards, and the bill ensures that this body is reflective of our vibrant community and enshrines Aboriginal representation on the board. Now, let me just say that I was absolutely delighted to see that. The minister will appoint members with a range of skills and experiences who hold office for terms of two years. The inaugural advisory committee established last May to support Homes Victoria with the implementation of the Big Housing Build will transition to become the new Homes Victoria advisory board. Members will have a range of skills from impact investing to engineering, infrastructure and financial risk management, and can I just send my best wishes to that committee and my thanks for all that they have done.

The Big Housing Build is something that I am enormously proud of, and everyone in the Andrews Labor government team is also enormously proud of it. This bill here contributes further to ensuring the largest social and affordable housing building program in Victoria’s history. The delivery of 12 000 homes means Homes Victoria needs to work closely with industry, the not-for-profit sector and the community to maximise the social and economic benefits of our build—of our builds, rather, because there are just so many of them, let me say. The bill also allows for structures that can more quickly allow for reinvestment back into delivery of the pipeline of social and affordable housing our state needs.

I have so much more to say about this and so much more that I have noted down to contribute. I will say that every time something comes up on housing I put my name down because I have got something to say and a lived experience to share, and so to the community that live in caravan parks, to the families that are doing it tough in rooming houses around our state and to those that are finding their home tonight in their car, know that I am trying. I am trying for you each and every day, and I am really proud that today is a day when my efforts are held on the public record of Victoria and will be for a long time to come. I will finish up by saying: Mr Gepp, I am proud to follow you in this contribution.

Mr BARTON (Eastern Metropolitan) (10:31): What a great speech to follow. I rise to speak on the Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022. I have stood many times in this place and said the words ‘Housing First’, because this truth must be acknowledged if we are to address the housing crisis faced by Victorians today. The public housing waitlist in Victoria has increased by 55 per cent in only the last five years. We have 54 945 households waiting to access public housing. These are individuals who have already been approved, their situation has been assessed and we have already decided they are in serious need of public housing, yet we cannot provide it to them. We have mothers escaping domestic violence sleeping in their cars with their kids. We have people with addictions who want help but every day face the challenges of sleeping rough. I had a constituent come to my office only the other day who has been sitting on a priority waitlist for over a year and has heard nothing. He is 75 years of age and he is couch surfing. Housing First—but this is not often the case. While the general public get the short end of the stick, property developers rake in millions of dollars. Yes, this government has committed to the Big Housing Build, part of which is being legislated in this bill today, and I do not want to underestimate the enormity of the Big Housing Build. It is a magnificent project, but I see this as a foundation from where we are going to move forward. The Big Housing Build promises to build 12 000 social and affordable homes for Victorians, which is a fantastic effort and the first time in this country.

I was in Scotland recently, and their government has committed to 10 times this amount. They want to build 110 000 affordable homes over the next 10 years. Seventy per cent of these will be social housing. Since 2007 Scotland has built 108 000 affordable homes, with the majority of these for social rent. Keeping in mind their population is slightly smaller than Victoria’s, that is a commitment. The Scottish system is focused on the rights of tenants. Landlords can only increase rent once a year, and if it is considered too much the tenant can report it to a rental officer. Tenants are formally engaged and consulted. Twenty-three per cent of all homes in Scotland are classified as social housing. Around half of this stock is held by local authorities and councils and the other half held by registered social landlords.

We know the housing crisis can be resolved. In Victoria we see time and time again housing being subject to planning only at the next election cycle. That has to stop. We are still to hear the government’s plans for after the Big Housing Build, where we are still expected to be far behind the national average of social dwellings, which is at 4.5 per cent. In Scotland they have conscientiously implemented a system of inclusionary housing, something we only see occasionally in Victoria. It may be 40 per cent of a housing project, and they get funding from the banks for the rest of it. The property is then built and run by one of the many housing associations, who ensure they offer social and affordable housing to vulnerable cohorts. We need to be looking at models like this in Victoria.

I am not sure that some of the strategies employed by the Big Housing Build rollout are doing the very best that we can do for the Victorian public, but we are doing something. ‘Social housing’ is a term often used to describe both public housing and community housing. The increased use of the term ‘social housing’ to describe such initiatives as the Big Housing Build is masking a general decline in the amount of truly public housing available. What we have seen reported recently is that the government is selling off land that has been 100 per cent dedicated to public housing—so directed particularly at vulnerable cohorts—and is allowing developers to provide a mix of social and affordable housing. This means that we are technically increasing the number of social and affordable dwellings but losing public housing property and selling off public land. This is not a win. Clearly the close to 55 000 households on our public housing waitlist are losing out.

Housing must be our first priority. Everything else is great, but if an individual does not have a safe and secure house over their head, they will face immense challenges. A long-term 10-, 20-, 30-year commitment is what we need and what Victorians deserve. Our population is getting older, and it is getting bigger. Rents are only increasing, the cost of living keeps going up, and we are not prepared. We have the capacity and the resources to end homelessness, so we need to make a decision as a community that this has to end. Housing is a human right. I commend this bill to the house.

Ms TERPSTRA (Eastern Metropolitan) (10:38): I rise to make a contribution on this bill, the Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022. I have had the benefit of listening to some of the contributions in this chamber, and I listened to Mr Barton’s contribution as well. I normally agree with a lot of what Mr Barton says in this chamber; however, there are a few things that I think need to be corrected just in regard to some final points that Mr Barton made. I think the imputation was that the government is looking at selling off land that is publicly owned for private housing. It is not actually correct, because there is a suite of arrangements that the government is entering into. What he was suggesting is actually not what it will look like, so I will just read this out so he can get an appreciation of what is actually going on. I know the Greens try and take some high moral ground on these sorts of issues as well, but let us face it, they oppose social housing at every turn in their neck of the woods. It is just a disgrace. I can point to multiple examples around the City of Yarra and those sorts of places, where any attempts by the government to try and develop social housing are met with opposition by Greens-dominated councils.

In regard to the point about what we are doing with land, what the bill does is provide Homes Victoria with a flexible toolkit to enter into partnerships it needs to with the private and not-for-profit sectors to boost the supply of social and affordable housing. The bill will allow Homes Victoria to innovate, and a good example of this is the ground lease model, which will roll out to deliver 1110 social, affordable and market rental homes, which will be financed, designed, built and operated by a consortium for 40 years. At the end of the period, the homes and the lease will revert back to the state. There is lots of granularity in what we are proposing to do, and that is just one aspect of this bill.

When you talk about, ‘We’ve got land stock and land supply’, if you look at some of the rebuilding that is going on as part of the Big Housing Build, for example, in my community in Heidelberg West—actually I live near there—there was lots of very old housing stock that had lived beyond their life, and I have been inside a lot of those places as well. They have been bulldozed, and what you are seeing is not only are those homes being rebuilt but the density is increasing. We are getting more new homes, fit-for-purpose homes. None of those homes would have had energy efficiency ratings or the like. All of those homes are being replaced. It is like a salt-and-pepper model, so you will have some private and some public. We are doing that at a range of sites. We are actually increasing the supply—we are increasing the density and the supply—and then we are looking at how we get a better mix of tenants in those properties as well, which addresses some of the other issues.

One of the things that I really do not like about this debate is when we talk about the types of people that need housing. We tend to stigmatise people who are looking for social and affordable housing, and I think that is a tragedy because there are a range of reasons often that people will need access to social and affordable housing. Some people will need it for a lifetime. Some people will need it for a period of their life. We should be careful not to characterise this debate as an all or nothing kind of debate and say it is certain types of people. There are all types of people who might need it for all types of circumstances. That is what our government does—we are there for people when they need us.

Again, I will just touch on some of the things around the rental scheme. We talk about social and affordable housing, but if you really want to look at what is behind it, if you dig deeper about why we have got a housing crisis, it is because the federal government for a number of decades has pulled out of this space and basically left it to the states to mop up. Traditionally, if you go back over decades, it is the federal government that should have had more of a role in providing social and affordable housing. It was up to them to provide funding to the states to deliver it, and they just have progressively been opting out, so it is up to the state government, and we have. We have stepped into this space with a massive commitment. As part of the Big Housing Build we have already secured 2000 homes for Victorians who have a mental illness and 1000 homes to provide safety and security for survivors of family violence, and 10 per cent of new dwellings will support Aboriginal Victorians to have culturally safe and self-determined housing options. The previous Morrison government—I do not think we heard anything from them about any of that, let us face it.

The Big Housing Build will deliver more than 12 000 homes, including 2400 affordable homes for Victorians who need it the most. Again, I wish we had a magic wand or we could snap our fingers and we could have this happen right now, today, but we cannot. That is not reality. This bill, for example, is part of rolling out the important legislative framework that we need to make these things happen. All these things take time. We are acting as quickly as we can to do all that we can. I mean, a $5.3 billion investment to the Big Housing Build is the single biggest investment in social housing out of all the state and territories and in Victoria’s history. I do not know what more we could do at this point in time. I think we are actually doing a lot. There is a hell of a lot going on.

I know Ms Watt has talked previously about the types of people who need social and affordable housing, but I also want to talk about the impact if you are a renter, for example. This is sort of tangential, but it goes to why people cannot afford to even get into the property market. If you are a casualised worker or you are working in the gig economy, how do you save to get a deposit? You cannot. So what do you need? You need social and affordable housing. You need a rental scheme to be able to access housing. So let us not forget for a moment about the multiple pressures that are impacting people in this space. We talk about the types of people who need social and affordable housing. The working poor—this is what the federal government has created. Thanks very much, Scott Morrison and your predecessors. The working poor are working their guts out often with 12-hour days and are either getting underpaid and ripped off or not getting paid at all and cannot bargain. As we know, the Jobs and Skills Summit is happening right now in Canberra because we have got a crisis in this country where workers cannot bargain to improve their wages. If you do not have money in your pocket, how do you put a roof over your head? It is actually appalling. Again, the government steps into this space and says, ‘All right, we will provide a scheme where people can access affordable housing’.

The bill is important because it allows Homes Victoria to support Victorians by providing a variety of housing options to meet the diversity of our needs. Homes Victoria is providing housing on a continuum, from delivering a Housing First approach for people experiencing homelessness to providing stable, secure housing.

I will just talk about homelessness for a moment. I volunteered for a number of years with a group where we would go and see people who were suffering from homelessness, and sometimes getting a roof over someone’s head who is homeless is very complex. It is not just about saying ‘Here’s a roof; go live there’, because often what happens is people who are homeless are suffering a range of other conditions. There could be mental illness, poor health—all those sorts of things. Someone who has suffered trauma in their life needs mental health treatment. I have met people who, despite being offered a roof over their head, choose to sleep on the street. It is not that simple. If homelessness was a simple thing to fix, we would have fixed it years ago. Countries around the world are struggling to fix homelessness. I know that in Finland they have got the Housing First model where they go, ‘We don’t care what your circumstances are; you’ve got a roof over your head’. But like I said, I have met people who have said to me, ‘I would rather sleep on the street than sleep in a place where I don’t feel safe and secure’. It is much more detailed and in-depth than that.

Homes Victoria, as I said, will provide that continuum, delivering that Housing First approach which is so critically important to enable people to get into stable, secure housing. That is critically important—stable, secure housing for low-income Victorians right through to affordable housing options for low to moderate income Victorians, including essential workers.

I just talked about low to moderate incomes. Why? Wages have been suppressed in this country. We have had 10 years of low wages growth. How many more problems did our federal government want to create for us? Honestly, if people want to get angry about housing, get angry at the previous government and their previous iterations for pulling out of social housing and their obligations. They abrogated their responsibilities on providing funding to the states so we could provide social and affordable housing. There is that. Then there is suppressed wages. We have had no wages growth for 10 years. Honestly, what do people want to do? Do you want to talk about what contributed to the homelessness and housing crisis? I think there is an answer. There is an answer right there.

I am really pleased to see this government taking such strong action, because we have had to step in. We have had no alternative but to step in—and we are proud to do that, because that is what Labor governments do. We actually do that stuff. We fundamentally understand what people need, because, you know, in Canberra they clearly did not. Thank goodness we have now got a Labor government in Canberra which understands these issues as well, and no doubt we will look forward to a long and productive working relationship with the federal Labor government on these sorts of issues.

Around Australia we hear stories of locals being priced out of their communities. It is all too common, right? People cannot get into the housing market because some people, fortunately for them, have been able to make a lot of money out of this. We also see the number of Airbnbs exploding exponentially. Wouldn’t it be nice to have two or three properties where you could have Airbnbs? Honestly, how many is enough? It is getting a bit obscene, isn’t it? How many properties do you need to have in your portfolio? You can rent one out as an Airbnb and make heaps of money, but we have got a situation in our country where people are living in their cars. Families are living in their cars. Honestly, it is obscene. Things need to be done about that as well, which is again tangential to this bill, but it goes to show you the mosaic of issues that have come together to bring this issue into sharp focus.

I wish it was so easy. Like I said, I wish we could snap our fingers, wave a wand and have it resolved straightaway, but the pressures and drivers and levers that influence property prices in this country are complex. We know what some of them are, and we know that a lot of them are really federally related. As I have said, we have heard stories around the country of people being priced out of the market. In Victoria recent reports point to rental vacancy rates in Melbourne being at around 1.6 per cent, while in regional Victoria rates have plummeted below 1 per cent. Boosting the supply of social and affordable homes is critical, and the Andrews government is ensuring we can do both.

This bill will play a critical role in facilitating the delivery of affordable housing through Homes Victoria. The bill creates a legislative framework for affordable housing programs to provide eligible households with access to affordable properties managed and accounted for distinctly from social housing. Once the minister has declared a program to be a housing program the legislation sets out the elements which can be determined and published by the director of housing to operationalise and declare that. The operational settings could include eligibility criteria, application processes, rent setting and tenure length. They are some of the things that Mr Barton mentioned in his contribution.

Certainly around the world you see examples. I think in France they have got some of the best, most favourable frameworks for tenants. There are examples of, I think, even postwar tenancies where you cannot increase the rent. It was set maybe in the 1940s and 50s, and landlords are actually prohibited from increasing rents. There are all sorts of measures. If you look around the world, there are a range of options.

Certainly these amendments are well on the way to improving circumstances for tenants. It is great to see housing being given such a focus, but I look forward to a bit more of a focus on wages for people, because ultimately young people find it very difficult to get into the housing market and they should have the same capacity that other people have had, like the boomer generation and even my own generation, to be able to access housing if that is what they want. And why not? Why shouldn’t you have the right to have a roof over your head and a place to call your own? We know that housing and having a stable and secure place to live is so important in a range of ways.

We also know that the affordable housing rental scheme is set to deliver approximately 2400 affordable rental homes to address affordability pressures not only in metropolitan Melbourne but also in regional Victoria. We know that housing affordability in the regions is at a critical point, and this bill will support the delivery of new affordable homes in Ballarat, Greater Geelong and Bendigo from late 2022—that is now. Under the scheme fixed-term rental agreements of three years will be available to low to moderate income households in metro Melbourne and regional Victoria who meet income eligibility criteria, so it goes to protecting tenants from the vagaries of people who just want to keep jacking up the rent. Essential government-funded service delivery workers such as nurses, police, teachers and care workers could also be eligible in areas of workforce shortage in regional Victoria, recognising the importance of these jobs to local communities, because we know it is hard to attract those sorts of essential workers to regional Victoria and we need to do that because there are critical shortages of, as I said, nurses, police, teachers, care workers—all those professions. And I know, having worked at the nurses union previously—I used to bargain for people who worked in the aged care sector—that it was so difficult to get real wage gains in those sectors, because as soon as you did, they would cut jobs. It is terrible, and again it goes to the point I made earlier about making sure we address wage stagnation in this country.

I might conclude my contribution on this bill at this point. It is a good bill. It is a great start—a $5.3 billion investment in making sure we get the Big Housing Build underway. I am proud to be part of the Andrews Labor government, which has shown such a huge commitment to housing, and I commend this bill to the house.

Mr HAYES (Southern Metropolitan) (10:53): This is a welcome bill and an inoffensive bill, but it falls well short of the benchmark. I rise to speak on legislation that makes a range of mechanical, technical and structural changes to legislation governing tenancies and housing in Victoria—changes that are sensible and understandable but far too little to make a dent in the chronic shortage of affordable housing in our state. The government has had every opportunity since 2014 to improve housing livability, and we are only this year taking some steps. In 2014 we had 9990 people on the priority waiting list for housing. As of March there were 30 508 people on that same damning list, and I think Mr Barton quoted a number even higher than that. So the time for action is really—well, it is not now; the time for action was eight years ago, but now we have to move. These figures expose a broken system, a system that has not worked for years, a system in chaos, with delays and unwillingness to respond. Isn’t housing a universal human need? The government prides itself on its big build for housing yet until recently has all but ignored the increasing need for affordable housing. While the government has made a promising commitment to addressing this issue in the latest budget, those investments will not be realised for many years.

We must be suspicious of this model of private social housing as mentioned here today by Mr Barton too. We know all too well that both of the major parties have suspect relationships with property developers, and it gives me little faith to think of an affordable housing model where developers are prioritised over residents.

Ms Taylor interjected.

Mr HAYES: Well, didn’t the Premier promise them super-profits?

Ms Taylor interjected.

Mr HAYES: Well, you don’t want to deny it. As I have previously raised on the issue of public housing properties such as Barak Beacon estate, Braybrook and Ascot Vale being neglected and housing options being inadequately maintained and not refurbished, we need more publicly owned housing, not less. The pursuit of private contracts rather than restoring existing publicly owned housing has an adverse outcome for Victorians, both in social and in economic consequences, especially the loss of publicly owned land. Such partnerships are opportunistic rather than strategic, and I hope the government soon wakes up to the mess it is creating with these complex arrangements.

Just as an alternative, perhaps Australia could look to Singapore to fix our housing crisis. Mr Barton brought up Scotland, but he knows more about that one. I have done a bit of research into Singapore. Singapore has got a population similar to Melbourne’s, only they do not plan to double it over the next 25 years. Here I am going to quote some information from an article by Cameron Murray in ‘Australian property’ of 21 January 2022. He said:

During the past four decades in which home ownership among Australians aged 25–34 has sunk from around 60% to 45%, home ownership among the same age group in Singapore has climbed from around 60% to 88%.

That is dreamland for us. He said:

There’s a good chance that’s because Singapore is doing something right.

What Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, provides mortgages, and allows buyers to use their compulsory retirement savings (what Australians call superannuation) for both a deposit and repayments.

There’s more to it than that. It limits eligibility by income and age, requires owners to hang on to the property for five years, and limits their resale to only other eligible buyers.

Eight in ten of all the dwellings in Singapore today were built over the past half century by the Housing Development Board.

Perhaps to copy this system exactly would be too much for our private developer model, but something not quite so extensive might be worth consideration, as with other models—mentioned here today—of public investment in housing which have been successful in other countries. Many of these overseas models could be worth consideration in this area too.

However, back to today’s bill, this is an unoffensive effort but it falls well short of what we need as a community to house our people. The Jobs and Skills Summit was mentioned today, and we say, ‘Just build more homes’, but we are building—we are building a hell of a lot of homes. If you drive around Melbourne, you will see cranes everywhere. You will see homes and houses being developed, housing all over the place. But we have a population that has been growing—and the opposition called for more population growth today—in Melbourne at 135 000 people per year, so that is 135 000 homes needed every year. 2500 people per week was what Melbourne was growing at pre pandemic, which is what they want to try to bring it back to after the Jobs and Skills Summit.

With that sort of growth we have got to build 2500 homes a week, and we leave it to the private market to do that, but that is an enormous amount of housing to build. That is just something we have got to keep in mind when we are planning to boost our population for economic reasons. That adds to the demand on housing overwhelmingly. We have got to build that and then build more public housing as well. This is an enormous effort and puts an enormous strain on Melbourne’s infrastructure—and housing of course.

It is a delicate balancing act, governing Victoria. It is not easy, and it is the opinion of the Sustainable Australia Party that today’s government has failed in this act to match infrastructure with population growth. It has encouraged that population growth without matching infrastructure. There has been far too much money spent on purported vote-winning infrastructure projects and far too little on hospitals and homes. These are essentials for health and livability. I do not oppose the bill, but I must strongly urge the government to start taking housing unaffordability seriously.

Ms BATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:00): I rise to make my contribution on the Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022. In doing so I would like to reiterate what the previous Liberal-Nationals speaker said in that we do not oppose this bill. It is largely a functional bill and certainly an administrative one, as the title informs us, but it does give me an opportunity to raise some issues from my Eastern Victoria electorate and also to delve into some of the—we will call them flaws or some of the things that could be improved in this bill.

We have heard some interesting topics and conversations and had some patting on the back from Labor members in this house. Anyone would think that all is hunky-dory, but we know that in the regions particularly the situation is still quite dire in terms of public housing accessibility and affordability. The Andrews government promised this Big Housing Build, and we have heard it all today. The Premier has talked about, ‘We’ve delivered the biggest investment in social housing Victoria has ever has seen X, Y and Z’, and 25 per cent of that was earmarked for regional Victoria.

I have concerns, and my concerns are not based on my thoughts alone but are from speaking to members of the community and also the sector that really is at the very coalface of this, the people who work with our homeless people and people looking for permanent roofs over their heads. They say to me, and I will identify who they are shortly, that they have identified in this big build there are supposed to be 88 of these homes constructed in Gippsland. We are two years on from this grand announcement, and they are still none the wiser as to where those 88 houses are, how far along they are and whether they have been built or not. These are people who work in the sector, so we are hearing all this fantastic, ‘We’re solving it’, yet people working right at the heart of the sector still do not know the pathway to those homes being available.

In relation to earmarking and tagging money in various LGAs, local government areas, out of the six in Gippsland, only three are targeted for funding. The other three have not been identified for funding. My community in Gippsland is saying they are feeling very vulnerable that again Labor will have these big announcements but on-the-ground homes for people in our region will not come to fruition. They are quite nervous about that.

The other thing—and I have raised this in an adjournment debate—is around people still living in motel units. Families are living in motel units. I raised this issue in Parliament a couple of months ago; there were 20 families, roughly 60 people, who spend their nights in motel rooms because of that dearth of social housing and the long waitlist. Labor has been in government for eight years and we still have this massive problem.

I thank all those people who work in the services. They do an enormous job. I have had the privilege of communicating with people like Chris McNamara through the Gippsland homelessness sector and through Quantum Support Services. She most recently informed me that there are 2200 Gippslanders on a priority waitlist with no property available at present. She stressed also the entry point services. She feels that those intake officers are absolutely overworked and we need more of those intake officers, because there are only a couple of them that cover all of the variety of centres across Gippsland. When you see the Premier’s spin machines and Facebook professionals, you just wonder why some of that money—some of that superfluous money—cannot be directed to employ people who actually help face to face Gippslanders, in my case, but Victorians as a whole. It is more important to spin it than to deliver those services to vulnerable people.

As we have heard before—and I fully agree—people can come from all walks of life and find themselves in a situation where they are homeless. It is very distressing. You hear on the radio on a number of occasions that professional people for whatever reason—marriage separation or domestic violence—end up in a caravan park. Some people do that by choice. I have got relatives who live in Queensland, and they love their permanent home in a caravan park. They think it is awesome, and I agree, but for others it is not their chosen place and it is very challenging for them—if they are lucky enough to get into one.

These services include the need for, as I have just said, intake-assessment staff to triage those complexities that individuals face, such as rental arrears advice, private rental assistance and negotiating with our real estate agents. Often people are in a stressed situation and they need that support. They are absolutely willing to go that length, but we all need help. This is one example this very good group of people have identified. Mitchell Burney runs the Quantum youth refuge in Morwell, and he has been in this space for many, many years. He told me some of the harrowing statistics when it comes to youth homelessness. The age group between 16 and 25—a quarter of Gippsland’s homelessness is represented in that age group. As the issues for this age group are focused on income and lack of rental history—you know, ‘Have you got a history?’, ‘No, because I’m too young; I’m just leaving home’ or ‘I’m leaving someone’s couch’—their reliance certainly is on crisis facilities. And indeed crisis facilities are scarce in Gippsland, with only 16 refuge beds spread across six centres. With the limited length of stay in terms of that crisis accommodation, it is really hard to exit them when they are exiting them to nowhere, so there is this bottleneck of need versus throughput. As I say, I thank them very much for giving me their time and their information, and I put it on the public record. If you cannot be a squeaky wheel in here—this is part of our role, to identify the need for all levels of government to hear.

I would like to talk about the private sector as well and what some of the proactive councils are doing in our electorates, and I will give you one example. Without a doubt the cost of living is pressurising all families on a low to medium income, and for those who are unemployed that is exacerbated and magnified. The analysis of rental data by the commonwealth government’s Everybody’s Home campaign revealed that rental prices in Gippsland increased by an average of a bit over 8 per cent per year over the last three years. Again, that surge in cost-of-living pressures really significantly impacts on people. The East Gippsland shire has recognised that finding rental accommodation is challenging. They have been very proactive, and I congratulate them for it. They have put letters out to ratepayers who have secondary properties, sent from the council, asking them to consider the rental market. The initiative responded to the lack of rental accommodation in our region. We know when we talk to anybody in small business in our regions it is very difficult to attract staff. That staff could be the chefs to bring people back into our region and have high-quality experiences in our pubs and clubs but also certainly in our beautiful restaurants in Eastern Victoria. Having those chefs, they need to have a home. They are often bringing their families. Police officers, teachers, doctors and nurses are certainly on that list too, who are looking to get into the rental market. And if they are struggling and they have a good income ahead of them, if not already, then it is really hard for that lower socio-economic group to get in there.

The East Gippsland shire certainly looked at growing this via developing a housing and settlement strategy providing over 1000 lots for subdivision and issuing planning permits. I just would like to make a comment on some of the words that Ms Terpstra said in her contribution and take umbrage of behalf of fully self-funded retirees. It feels like if they have worked hard—whether it is, as I said, a teacher working long hours and serving the community through education or whether it is a farmer who has worked 16 hours a day for 40 years—and they choose to buy a second home and then use that to help fund their retirement as part of their superannuation program or funded retirement program, apparently under the eyes of Ms Terpstra that is now a wicked thing. It is unfair and I think short-sighted, because we need to have a great range of people in this state. Unless we are going to go to a socialist state or a communist state where everybody gets measured out the same and there are no privately owned assets, then we need to have that range, and if people choose to own a house as part of their self-funded retirement, well, so be it. It is also wise—and I congratulate East Gippsland Shire Council for being proactive—to engage with people who may be self-funded retirees or have that second place to see if they would like to rent it out in the market.

Indeed The Nationals in government will—and we have made a commitment along with the Liberals—unlock 50 000 regional and rural housing lots in our communities. We will do that and support our councils by having planning flying squads that really leverage the pathway of planning permits. I am sure there is again a bottleneck on the Minister for Planning’s desk about getting those lots through. I am not saying that they should not be totally properly worked through in all their capacity and all their requirements, but where possible we need to unlock those and we certainly will be supporting our community and our councils to do so.

In the time I have left I just also want to share something about housing affordability in the social housing realm. My colleague the Honourable Tim Bull is a very active member in his community. He put some questions to the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, and he came out with the following research: East Gippsland has 33 social housing homes sitting vacant, and they have been vacant for a considerable period of time. The response was that they are being held for the homeless for an extended period under a program to assist with homelessness. It is called the From Homelessness to a Home program. So we have got 33 public housing homes sitting vacant, waiting for people to go into them who are homeless, and there are whatever reasons sitting behind this. But it should not take six months for suitable families on a waitlist to get into these homes, so I call on the government to fix that up. The other thing is that this is just the municipality of East Gippsland. If you extend that right across the state, there would be hundreds of homes for sitting vacant in the state government’s hands that are there for the From Homelessness to a Home program. Go and work that one out. I wish the government would and release those for people in need.

Finally, I would just like to finish my contribution in terms of the work that people do in our communities that sits in the social housing realm. I would like to flag the Traralgon East Community Centre, who have an open-door policy and support all people staying in their homes in East Traralgon but really provide a communication forum for those people in public housing. I would like to give a shout-out to Sarah Callow. It is very much on a very limited budget—really it is funded through donations of clothing and the like and very small gold coin donations. These people—and there are many of them across all our communities who work in that social housing space—do an amazing job. I had the privilege of speaking with some of the people that came in for a nutritious lunch the other day and listening to them, so I actually want the government to go out and listen to those people sitting in those sorts of centres to understand the issues facing them.

Ms TAYLOR (Southern Metropolitan) (11:15): I am not taking lectures from the Liberal-National parties about social housing. Speaking for the metro areas, they seem to oppose every upgrade or rebuild that we have in our metro areas, so I am just not copping that; that just ain’t going to sit. You cannot have it both ways: ‘We want social housing—but we oppose every development you do’. I am not copping that today.

The reason that we are pointing out with regard to the $5.3 billion investment in the Big Housing Build that it is the biggest single investment in social housing out of all the states and territories and in Victoria’s history is that it is factually correct. It is not about proposing one way or another as to what that actually says other than that it is factually correct. So we are putting it on the table, because otherwise people will distort, manipulate, undermine and diffuse that message, and that is not fair to fellow Victorians, because they deserve the truth. They deserve to know what we are spending and what we are investing in for their benefit. I do not think it is good to trivialise these matters, because we are talking about homes for fellow Victorians.

The Big Housing Build will deliver more than 12 000 homes, including 2400 affordable homes, for Victorians—and I am going to speak more to those nuances shortly—who need them most. As part of the Big Housing Build we will secure 2000 homes for Victorians who have mental illness and 1000 homes to provide safety and security for survivors of family violence, and 10 per cent of new dwellings will support Aboriginal Victorians to have culturally safe self-determined housing options. No-one is under any illusion that this is not an urgent matter. I do live in a suburb, I do live in my own area, and I can see people absolutely battling. There is not any day of the week that we are not aware of the incredible challenges that so many Victorians are facing, and it is frankly patronising when people try to suggest that we would not be aware of such matters. Regularly we get calls to help and support people for various issues with regard to housing and housing affordability, so trying to suggest we are not aware of that is frankly just incorrect. I should say with regard to where matters are at in terms of the rollout of the Big Housing Build, because this is another factual element that Victorians deserve to be made aware of, Homes Victoria have passed the halfway mark, with 6300 homes already completed or underway and 1400 households being either settled in or about to move into their brand new homes.

Another element that is incredibly relevant with regard to the construction of these homes for Victorians who very much need them is the jobs associated with the Big Housing Build. It will create an average of 10 000 new jobs each year, creating new employment opportunities throughout the Victorian community. Only a Labor government knows well that it is important to constantly be supporting local Victorians and creating where we can employment opportunities, because, guess what, that helps people to be able to afford to rent and to be able to buy food and other things; it is a circle. So we join those dots, because it all matters as part of helping Victorians to be housed and to have safe shelter. Furthermore, apprentices, cadets and trainees will undertake 10 per cent of the work on major projects. A gender equity plan will support the increase of women’s participation in the construction industry, helping address inequalities that have been exacerbated through the pandemic. Hundreds of new jobs will be created for Aboriginal Victorians, people with disability, social housing renters and people from diverse backgrounds.

I note there has been quite a bit of discussion regarding the ground lease model. On the one hand this is a positive thing because it is good to get clarity. It can be a little complicated, and it can be hard to get through some of the more detailed elements of the ground lease models in a 30-second grab on the television, so having a good and proper debate about these things is actually very healthy.

I think there are some elements that need to be clarified here and now. This model enables the community housing providers to play an important role by providing tenancy management and high-level property management and maintenance. The sector is well regulated and has a track record of providing specialist services to support vulnerable residents, connecting them with the support services they need to ensure vibrant, thriving and inclusive communities. There is a lot more I want to say on this, and I am getting to the heart of what I am trying to convey here. It is the model being used with projects currently underway in Brighton. I was there the other day with Minister Pearson, looking at great progress. I should say that the kids from the local Elsternwick Primary School were very excited because they know there will be new families coming to those homes, or some families who might be returning to those homes who lived there previously. They are going to get new friends at their local school, so they are excited about that.

This ground lease model you will find is helping to build homes in Flemington and Prahran as well, which will deliver approximately 1100 social, affordable and market homes on land which will be leased. Let us get this on the table. The land will be leased for 40 years to the consortium, and at the end of that period the housing and land returns to Homes Victoria, so I do not want to hear any more pork pies about this or distortions. It drives me crazy. Stick to the facts, please, out of respect for fellow Victorians and those who may end up living in these properties.

Another thing is that you cannot have an integrated model unless you integrate. If you only build social housing, you cannot integrate. That is the point. It is actually a positive. Instead of putting it down, pulling it apart and undermining it every second of every day, maybe just think that somebody in government—many people in government—has thought through this carefully because they want to build an integrated model for the benefit of fellow Victorians. Maybe just for a second stop the putdowns and look at what this can deliver for Victorians in our community.

Some of the other benefits that have been cleverly avoided by people not in government are the benefits of these rebuilds; namely, energy efficiency, climate-friendly homes and accessibility. I spoke earlier in my speech about being able to tailor to people with mental illness, Aboriginal communities and also people with disabilities. There is also flexibility to allow for people who might need more bedrooms or less bedrooms depending on the size of their families. Also, there will be very carefully constructed landscaping to create true amenity in the area.

Let me tell you, there is very intensive consultation with the local community, because there are those in this chamber that say, ‘Yeah, just build tons more social housing’. But I tell you what: if it were next door to them, they would oppose it. I know there are some people in here who do not realise that with each of those sites where we are rebuilding there has been careful consultation with the local community to get the right balance in terms of height and density. I am not sure—I think they kind of want to have their cake and eat it too, because on the one hand they are saying, ‘Yes, build more social housing’, but I tell you what, if we were to increase those heights or those densities on those sites, they would be the first to complain. You cannot have it both ways, and I think there are some politically opportunistic arguments that have been laid on the table here that are frankly irritating and that distort what is happening out there.

I am proud of these rebuilds and obviously all the new housing that is coming to the fore, because it is fellow Victorians that are building them as well. It is giving so many opportunities in terms of jobs, and it is making sure that we have housing that is fit for purpose and meets contemporary design standards. For instance, I recall when I was visiting one of the housing sites there was a mother, she had a child with asthma, and she—

Members interjecting.

Ms TAYLOR: Frankly, I am having trouble hearing myself because of the din in the chamber. Excuse me, but I am having trouble hearing myself. It is a bit distracting.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Bourman): Order! Could Ms Taylor be heard in silence. I am looking at you guys.

Ms TAYLOR: It is a little difficult, sorry, but I need some peace. So there was a mother and she had a daughter with asthma, and she was saying, ‘Look, I’m living in social housing, the insulation isn’t good and I’m having to use a lot of heating to be able to keep my child well and to stop the asthmas attacks’. And I said, ‘You know what? That is why we are rebuilding’, because, guess what, when you renovate some of these old sites you cannot make them truly climate friendly. You cannot make them energy efficient. You cannot retrofit. I have asked about this, because I know this has been put forward—and there are some unhealthy distortions that have been circulated, even in the media. I think it is important to be really clear about the fact that some buildings just cannot be renovated to make them truly climate friendly and energy efficient and to provide accessibility.

I have asked on that point and sought clarity. Let it be clear in this chamber. I do not want people saying pork pies and making up stuff that is not true and that frankly is not fair to those members of the community who may end up moving back into the newly rebuilt properties—it is at their discretion. So I just want that to be clear as well, because one thing I cannot stand is injustice. I need to see accuracy, and when I see distortion—that stray from the truth—I find it frankly infuriating.

Now, finally there is the issue of the continuum. The continuum is to make sure that we look after people the whole way through their experiences in life. And what I am saying about that—and I think this was discussed earlier in the chamber—is that people can have different periods of their lives where they have more or less income. I am not saying anything that everyone here does not know already, but of course the plan essentially, in terms of what we are delivering, is actually to tailor to the various critical moments, if you like—or it could be years, it could be a decade, it could be whatever—where various Victorians are having pretty serious challenges in their lives.

If I can allay some concerns about government understanding the nuance between social and affordable housing—and I know those concepts can be bandied about, and I do not say this with criticism, I am just saying I think it is fair that people have raised those comments in the chamber—I just want to reassure the chamber that it is fully understood, the nuance between those various needs. So I say that without criticism. We know that the Victorian affordable housing program is a significant response to tackle the growing gap in housing affordability and supply for low to moderate income households, including essential workers. I will not have time to go into that in detail, but I did just want to touch on that point to say it is fully understood that we have—as applies probably across the globe—Victorians at various stages in terms of their capacity to be able to afford and to access housing or safe shelter of a contemporary design that truly meets their needs.

The affordable housing rental scheme is set to deliver approximately 2400 affordable rental homes to address affordability pressures in metro Melbourne and regional Victoria. We also know—and just out of respect for any members in the chamber and obviously the community who live in the regions—that housing affordability in the regions is at a critical point, and this bill will support the delivery of new, affordable homes in Ballarat, Greater Geelong and Bendigo from late 2022. Under the scheme fixed-term rental agreements of three years will be available to low to moderate income households in metro Melbourne and regional Victoria who meet income eligibility criteria.

On that note, I am going to close out with the fact that, yes, we have an extraordinary investment. It is a historic investment out of all the states and territories and in Victoria’s history, but this is not to say there is not an urgent need and there is not so much more to do—of course there is. But I think for the benefit of fellow Victorians they deserve to know factually what is actually being delivered, what has already been delivered and what is underway. I think that is only fair.

Mr QUILTY (Northern Victoria) (11:30): I will be brief. Victoria has a housing problem. There is a shortage of housing. The Liberal Democrats want to solve this problem by building more houses, and that is why we will not support this bill. The government is telling everyone that the point of this legislation is to build more houses, but the government is either conning everyone or has no idea what it is doing, or both. The so-called big build will only scratch the surface. Many new homes will come from tearing down existing ones. Housing is becoming less affordable because there is a shortage of housing. The shortage is caused by the government. The use of planning restrictions, regulatory burdens and taxes mean that housing construction cannot keep up with population growth. The government should know this is happening because it just created a new tax that takes advantage of its strategy of drip-feeding land into the housing market.

The failure of this bill is that it does not relax planning restrictions, reduce regulatory burdens or lower taxes on housing. In some ways it does the opposite. The effect of this bill will be to replace private landlords with government landlords and to force taxpayers to cover the costs of other people’s housing. Private landlords may not cover themselves in glory, but government landlords are even worse. Instead of trying to get your hot water fixed by contacting your catty estate agent, you will have to appeal to a faceless department that might never respond. Anyone who has spent any time at all dealing with the issue of public housing will know the government is probably the worst landlord possible. The fact that this is all supported by taxpayers is even worse. We cannot solve the housing shortage by forcing the costs onto other people. We do not make housing cheaper by getting someone else to pay for it. All this is doing is crowding out private development, so the chronic housing shortage will continue unabated.

At the end of the day the problem is we do not have enough housing. Where land is expensive we need to increase housing density, and where land is cheap we need to release more of it, both of which involve relaxing planning restrictions. This bill makes the problem worse, and that alone would be enough to oppose the bill. But there is more. Worse than exacerbating the housing crisis, the bill enables the government to make deals with property developers unchecked. This government has time and again shown itself incapable of managing deals with private enterprise. Massive cost overruns and budget blowouts are the result of every deal, and the taxpayers are left on the hook for it. With this legislation they will be able to inject as much taxpayer money as they want into the hands of property developers, with no expectation of outcomes anywhere. It is a honey pot for corruption that will see buckets of taxpayer money poured into the pockets of the chosen few for the purpose of creating low-value housing on expensive land. Property developers get a bad rap, but it is collusion with government that allows corruption to flourish. I have every expectation that this bill will lead to corruption and blowouts. It is a bill that sounds nice, but it will cause real harm—so of course the Greens will support it. They talk the talk about property development and corruption but sign off on legislation that enables it. They talk about increasing public housing but oppose building more houses in the suburbs where their councillors are.

We do not need the government to take over more of the current choked housing supply; we need the government to stop choking it. If the government wants to paddle in the housing market, it should be via pushing the release of vastly more land onto the market to push the price down and supporting innovative new modular housing solutions so small houses can be built quickly and cheaply. Wading into the private market is only going to make things worse, not better. Most government spending on housing is wasted, and this bill will only make that worse. The only ways to solve the housing crisis are either to limit demand, so stop the population growing—that is the Sustainable Australia solution—or to increase the supply, so build more houses, the Liberal Democrat solution, which means lifting restrictions on building more housing, releasing more land and allowing more modular contemporary building to push through the shortage. Anything else is a waste of time and money.

Ms LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (11:34): I rise to speak about the Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022, which the opposition is not opposing. We have heard a lot from government members this morning patting themselves on the back about their success in public housing. We have heard a lot about this Big Housing Build that is supposedly delivering more houses in Victoria. But what we have not heard about, what the government has not spoken about, is the disposals that they have every year in social housing as well. We hear they are adding all these houses to the stock, but we do not hear about what they are disposing of. We also do not hear about what they are hiding. We know quite clearly that they are hiding the public housing waiting list. The latest data that they have published on the website is from March 2022. We are now in September. These figures are published quarterly. I know from being a former housing minister that you can get those numbers on a daily basis. I know that the department would have sent a brief to the minister in the first week of July for the June quarterly housing waiting list, but here we are in September. We are due for another set of data at the end of this month, and we still do not have the June waiting list.

Now, let us talk about the waiting list and why we may not have the June waiting list. Well, for instance, the public housing waiting list in Victoria has exploded under this government. When I left, the last list that I published was the September 2014 waiting list. There were 34 618 applications on that waiting list. This was a decrease from what I had inherited in 2010 when I took over that portfolio; there were 41 212 applications on the waiting list at that time. So I actually reduced that waiting list quite significantly, by almost 6600 applications. We did that by working with people on the waiting list to make sure that their housing needs were met, and we were very successful in reducing the number of people who were actually on the housing waiting list—unlike the previous governments, the Bracks and Brumby governments, where they would just cleanse the list. They would write to people and say, ‘Do you still want to be on this list?’, and if they did not hear from them they would just cross them off the list. That was an appalling practice that was admitted to by the then director of housing. It was an appalling practice.

We put a stop to that, and we actually worked with people to make sure that they got housed. But that 34 618 was still too many people on the list, and I wanted to drive that down even further. But what we have seen under this government is that the number of people who are actually on the total waiting list has now exploded—as I said, each one of these is an application; it is a household, it is a family—to 55 097 applications on the list. That is 55 097 households or families. That is a 59 per cent increase under this government, which is appalling, but even more appalling has been their record on the early housing applications, which has really blown out. That was 9990 in September 2014. There are now 30 508 of the most vulnerable households in Victoria languishing on that priority waiting list. That is an appalling increase of 207 per cent, an extra 20 679 families—the most vulnerable in this state. These are people who are homeless. They are people who are escaping domestic violence. They are people who are living with a disability. They are people who have special housing needs, yet this government is content to leave them languishing on a waiting list—an appalling record by this government.

We know from the data that they do publish on the Victorian housing register that half of those families, 15 302, are actually homeless. These are people who are without a roof over their head, and this government should actually hang their heads in shame over the waiting lists and the blowout of those waiting lists. But we hear a lot about the government’s big build—‘Oh, we’re going to add 12 000 properties to the stock’. Even if they were all new properties, they would house less than a quarter of the people who are on the waiting list, so it is clearly not enough.

But what they do not talk about is the disposals that they carry out every year. What we can see from the latest annual report, the additional data that is published as part of that annual report, is that in 2019–20 they disposed of 1612 properties, and they followed this up in 2020–21 by disposing of a further 1031 properties. There are over 2600 properties that they have just disposed of. Of those, in 2020, 538 were just demolished. In 2021, 737 were just demolished. The rest are lease handbacks, because sometimes the department does lease a house, or they were sales or they were transferred to the community housing sector. Some of them were disposed of by the community housing sector as well, and there is no explanation as to why that was done.

When they talk about, ‘Oh, we’re going to increase this housing stock’, let us have a look throughout my electorate at the record from 2014 to 2022. If we look at the Alpine shire, there were six less social housing properties in the Alpine shire in 2021 than there were in 2014. In Benalla, again six less properties; in Buloke, 12 less properties; in Campaspe, 27 less properties; and in Gannawarra, 10 less properties. In Greater Bendigo it has risen—it has gone up by 106, but that is not nearly enough to house the thousands of people who are on the housing waiting list in Greater Bendigo. In Greater Shepparton it increased by 66. At least 40 of those are the places in the foyer that I started to build that was completed after the 2014 election.

In Indigo they have dropped by six. In Loddon there are nine less homes; in Mansfield there are five less homes; in Mildura, 14 less homes; in Mitchell, nine less homes; in Moira, 34 less homes; in Mount Alexander, three less homes; in Murrindindi, seven less homes; in Nillumbik, four less homes; in Strathbogie, three less homes; in Swan Hill, 15 less homes; and in Towong, three less homes. In Wodonga it has gone up by three, in Whittlesea by 74 and in Wangaratta by 42, but it is not enough to house the hundreds of people who are on the housing waiting lists in those areas.

In the big build they talk about the numbers of properties that they are going to build. For the areas that I have seen figures for in media releases or in newspaper stories, for instance, in Shepparton the government claim they are going to build 130 new social housing units. There are 2383 households or families on the waiting list in Shepparton to get those 130 homes. That will leave 2253 of them still without homes after the 130 are built, and that would be the case if they were all new homes, because some of these will be replacement homes. We need to understand that of the 2383 applications on the housing waiting list in Shepparton, 2155 of those are the most vulnerable who are on the priority waiting list, yet we are hearing 130 possible new homes. We know that not all these homes are going to be new homes, because in their press release for the 120 supposedly new homes in Bendigo, the government—this is a press release from 16 September, I cannot remember which year—admitted that only 56 of those will be new homes; 64 are replacement homes.

So for the 3069 families languishing on the waiting list in Bendigo there are going to be 56 new homes. That still leaves 3013 families languishing on a waiting list, and 2746 of those families have priority access. They are waiting for a home now because they are homeless, they are trying to escape domestic violence or they are living with a disability.

Ms Shing interjected.

Ms LOVELL: Ms Shing may not care about them, but I do care about them. In Mildura, again it has been reported that there are about 115 homes to be built under the Big Housing Build. We do not know how many are new or how many are—

Ms Shing: On a point of order, Acting President, I am just wondering, when Ms Lovell talked about government members not caring about housing, if she was talking about Brighton or indeed another part of the state.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Gepp): There is no point of order.

Ms LOVELL: I think Ms Shing would probably know and it is quite clear that I was talking about Bendigo at that point, an area that I care very much about. As I said, in Mildura it has been reported that there are around 115 homes to be built under this Big Housing Build. We do not know how many are new or how many are replacements, but in Mildura there are actually 976 families on that waiting list; 871 of them have priority. These are people, as I said, who are homeless now, who are escaping domestic violence, who are living with a disability or who have a special housing need. And even if all 115 of those properties are new, it still leaves 861 languishing on Labor’s waiting list.

Labor just do not care. They do not invest in public housing. They knock it over, demolish it or sell it off as quickly as they build new ones, and we know this. When I became minister, in Norlane there were vacant blocks everywhere because, instead of investing in maintenance, they just demolished the houses. The Auditor-General actually delivered a report in 2010 about the Bracks and Brumby governments’ record that said because they had not invested in maintenance 10 000 properties were about to reach the end of their usable lifespan. That is a disgraceful record for a government as a landlord, that its houses were so degraded that they were going to be unlivable. It is just appalling that the government keep talking themselves up but not admitting to their failures and not helping Victorians who are in need.

Dr KIEU (South Eastern Metropolitan) (11:48): I rise to speak to and support strongly the Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022. A home is more than a roof over one’s head. The safety, the security and the dignity of a home provide one with the foundation for a good life and also stability for society. Housing accessibility and housing affordability are an enormous problem, and so is the homelessness issue. It would require the working together, the collaboration, of all levels of government, from federal to state to council, and also the private sector. But sadly what saw from the last federal government is that they did absolutely nothing to alleviate the problem.

The Legal and Social Issues Committee did a very extensive inquiry into homelessness and identified many problems.

Ms Lovell: The government haven’t responded to it yet.

Dr KIEU: In due course, Ms Lovell. But the government—thank you for prompting me—has already committed $5.3 billion to the Big Housing Build, which is the biggest single investment not only in Victoria’s history but also in the history of all other states and territories. As part of the Big Housing Build we will secure 2000 homes for Victorians who have mental illness and 1000 homes to provide safety and security for victim-survivors of family violence, which is one of the single most important causes of homelessness. Also, 10 per cent of new buildings will support Aboriginal Victorians to have culturally safe, self-determined housing options.

Up to this stage the government and Homes Victoria have passed the halfway mark, with 6300 homes already completed or underway, and 1400 households have either settled in or are about to move into their brand new homes. This bill will further ensure that through Homes Victoria we can continue to boost the supply of modern, energy-efficient affordable homes for Victorians who are most in need so they can have a place to call home.

The $5.3 billion Big Housing Build will also boost construction jobs. With every home that is constructed, our government is delivering jobs. Apprentices, cadets and trainees will undertake 10 per cent of the work on major projects. A gender equity plan will support an increase in women’s participation in the construction industry, and hundreds of new jobs will be created for Aboriginal Victorians, people with disability, social housing renters and people from diverse backgrounds.

The bill also formally establishes Homes Victoria as a contemporary housing agency with a robust governance structure. This bill will allow Homes Victoria to deliver housing on a continuum from social housing for the most vulnerable Victorians to affordable housing for low to moderate income earners, including essential workers, who we thank so much for their hard work during the last two years and ongoing. The bill formalises the transition of the director of housing to Homes Victoria and establishes an independent skills-based Homes Victoria advisory board to provide strategic advice to the CEO of Homes Victoria and also to the minister about long-term strategic direction, financial performance and stability, strategic risks and opportunities, and a corporate plan and performance indicators. Homes Victoria also needs a flexible toolkit to allow it to get the best value for Victorians and deliver more affordable homes throughout our state. So the bill also allows for a structure that can move more quickly and also quickly allow for reinvestment back into the delivery pipeline of the social and affordable homes our state needs.

The bill is so important because it allows Homes Victoria to support a variety of housing options, from delivering a Housing First approach for people experiencing homelessness to stable, secure housing for low-income Victorians right through to affordable housing options for low to moderate income Victorians. The bill will also allow the Minister for Housing to declare an affordable housing program to be a Victorian affordable housing program where the state or the commonwealth provides a contribution to the construction, acquisition or management of affordable housing.

The bill also has some elements to deal with residential tenancies. On residential tenancies, the bill also amends the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 to support the provision of affordable rentals to eligible renters who are accessing the commonwealth’s national rental affordability scheme or the Victorian affordable housing programs. The national rental scheme eligibility relies on an income threshold determined by household composition. When a household income changes, such as when a new partner moves into the house, it potentially impacts eligibility and could trigger updating household information for the provider. The bill allows for the provision of a specific notice to vacate for the NRAS so that people who no longer satisfy the criteria move on because they can afford to do so, and that will make more stock available for people who are in need.

Also, the bill has some elements about antisocial behaviour and how to deal with it. In the public housing sector we have hundreds of thousands of residents and very few incidents of antisocial behaviour, but those incidents have to be regulated, which they have not been. This bill will address that issue. In the few minutes left before question time I commend this bill to the house because it is a very important, essential bill. After all, adequate housing is a fundamental human need and also a universal human right.

Mr GRIMLEY (Western Victoria) (11:57): I rise to speak on the Residential Tenancies, Housing and Social Services Regulation Amendment (Administration and Other Matters) Bill 2022. This bill establishes some governance arrangements for the new agency, Homes Victoria, created to deliver the Big Housing Build. It transitions relevant existing functions for the big build from the director of housing, creating a new role of CEO. It will equip Homes Victoria with similar rights and powers to act as a property developer. Homes Victoria will manage the affordable housing scheme’s 2400 tenancies. The bill also establishes a new advisory board.

The bill responds to concerns from public housing residents who are reluctant to make a complaint about an antisocial neighbour for fear of having their identity exposed. Residents will be able to lodge a community impact statement for VCAT to consider when an application is made to evict someone for their antisocial behaviour, and this is great news. People living on the public purse—but everyone, really—should respect their home and the neighbours around them. We have heard many stories of people trashing government-supplied housing and making neighbours’ lives a living hell, and this is just not good enough. The bill expands the definition of ‘common areas’ so that, for example, if a resident is trafficking drugs in the common area of a public housing estate, they may be subject to a notice to vacate.

But the real reason I wanted to speak to this bill is to talk about the broader issue of social housing and my plans for a regional housing summit. Earlier this year I met with the then Minister for Regional Development, Mary-Anne Thomas, to discuss issues in regional Victoria. One discussion we had was about the housing issues plaguing my electorate of Western Victoria. I spoke of the interconnectedness of employment, economic development, population growth and the associated social issues. For example, if a young person cannot find a rental, jobs cannot be filled, they cannot stay in the rural or regional town and they cannot bring up their family there or have family support, and there are of course knock-on effects on industry as a result of this. In the meeting with Minister Thomas she asked me, ‘So what are some solutions to this housing problem?’. My honest answer was, ‘There are plenty of solutions, and the best people to answer your question are the councils, community groups and other stakeholders in regional Victoria’. That is why I proposed a regional housing summit.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.