Housing
Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (12:30): (633) My question is to the Minister for Housing. Minister, over 50 per cent of Airbnb properties are located in regional Victoria. Why then are only 25 per cent of funds collected from your government’s holiday and tourism tax for social and affordable housing being spent in our regions?
Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Housing, Minister for Water, Minister for Equality) (12:30): Thanks, Mr Mulholland, for your interest in the way in which we can continue to deliver more social and affordable housing across the state. It is refreshing to see that your new-found interest in this area is arising. It is understandable really that you would seek to provide a new title to the short-stay accommodation levy and the work that we are doing to make sure that we are providing more opportunities for people to find long-term housing. Mr Mulholland, you might not like it – I am not sure how many investment properties you have got; I am not sure how many investment properties your colleagues have got – but this short-stay levy process is about making sure that we can provide more housing to people in regional areas who cannot, as childcare workers, as teachers, as aged care workers and as council workers, find rental accommodation and who are not moving to the areas where those needs in service delivery are ever more pronounced.
This is why, when being able to address a carefully calibrated balance on making sure that we are getting a setting right for short-stay accommodation of up to 28 days for a non-principal residence – again, I am not sure how many investment properties that might otherwise exclude for you, Mr Mulholland – this is about making sure we can incentivise people to be able to find permanent accommodation, because the rental yields are there. The Real Estate Institute of Victoria is very, very clear that rental yields for long-term accommodation are higher than they have ever been. Therefore we are doing everything we can do to make sure that there is more housing brought online, including in regional Victoria.
When it comes to the investments that we have made across regional Victoria, you will note, Mr Mulholland, with your new-found interest in social housing, that the Big Housing Build has $5.3 billion as the initial investment, of which $1.25 billion has gone to regional Victoria – that is 25 per cent. When we think about the fact that in regional Victoria we have got about 24 per cent of the population of Victoria living in that area, it stands to reason that we have a commensurate application of that levy but also the $60 million as modelled with the carve-out of a principle place of residence and that subletting arrangement.
Members interjecting.
Harriet SHING: Ms Lovell, it would do you well to actually just listen, because you might learn something. But we are now in a position to deliver around $60 million in social housing that will benefit the entire state, Mr Mulholland. So it is about returning that benefit to Victoria as a whole.
Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (12:33): Minister, will the holiday and tourism tax – which I note was supposedly and is claimed to have been secured by the Greens, this new tax – actually be used on social housing in regional Victoria?
Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Housing, Minister for Water, Minister for Equality) (12:33): Mr Mulholland, when the housing statement was released just under a year ago, it did state that we would move to introduce a short-stay levy which would then enable funding of social housing. Mr Mulholland, some months after having a really intense discussion, negotiation and consultation on the terms of this short-stay levy, which the Treasurer announced this morning and which will then be the subject of ongoing discussions in this place, we have been able to secure around $60 million, on the modelling that we have, to be able to return to social housing. That will include regional Victoria, Mr Mulholland, in the same way that the Big Housing Build includes $1.25 billion, in the same way that the regional housing package is $1 billion for regional and rural housing and in the same way that Minister Tierney’s work across regional worker housing and accommodation – $150 million – is conferring that benefit. Thank you for your new-found interest in regional Victoria as well, and the answer is yes.