Wednesday, 2 August 2023

Public housing

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (18:15): (355) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Housing, and my ask is that the Victorian Labor government stops privatising public housing and builds 100,000 public homes within the next 10 years. In just six days Margaret Kelly, the last remaining resident of the Barak Beacon public housing estate in Port Melbourne, will be forcibly evicted from her home by this Labor government. Barak Beacon is one of the precious public housing communities in Victoria which are about to be destroyed and privatised by the Victorian Labor government. Margaret has been waging a courageous fight against the privatisation of her home and the destruction of her community. She is being supported by community members, many of whom are young people currently at the forefront of the dire housing crisis engulfing the country and who know that public housing is a precious public asset that should be protected. But this government have forgotten that fact, because the truth is that despite the way they try to hide it behind glossy websites and terms like ‘redevelopment’ or ‘social housing’, this government want nothing to do with public housing, and they are in a hurry to get rid of their stock and their responsibility.

Estates like Barak Beacon are set to be carved up, with approximately two-thirds of each handed over to private developers for expensive housing. The remaining land will be handed to community housing providers. No public housing will be rebuilt at Barak Beacon or any of the sites that they are privatising and demolishing, and the model hands developers large profits, with taxpayers footing a bill of almost $500 million over the next 40 years via direct payments from the government to these private companies. Privatising these four estates alone will cost over $700 million for just an extra 52 community homes, coming to a figure of nearly $1.3 million per community home. This neoliberal experiment this government likes to call the Big Housing Build will only facilitate some community housing and a majority of for-profit housing and result in the destruction of hundreds of public homes.

At one time good governments saw it as their responsibility to make sure their citizens could access safe, secure and affordable housing. To achieve this vision those governments built public housing, the most direct and effective way of making housing affordable. If we are to build the thousands more public homes we desperately need now, we need land to build them on and to not hand the only public land we have to private developers. When governments stop building public housing they give up on making housing affordable. More public homes means less people pushed into homelessness and less people needing to compete in the private rental market. It puts downward pressure on housing costs and makes housing more affordable. It is the most straightforward and most effective solution to our housing crisis. I ask the Minister for Housing to stop the Victorian Labor government’s privatisation of public housing and build 100,000 homes – public homes – over the next 10 years.