Wednesday, 16 October 2024

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (12:48): (1151) My question is to the Minister for Planning. The former VicRoads site at Kew in my electorate is a sizeable piece of public land at 2.67 hectares. It is very close to the city, with both excellent public transport and green spaces nearby. The government has previously flagged its intentions to simply flog this site off to private developers, with no public housing and no social housing requirements on the site, the only caveat being that 10 per cent would be earmarked for affordable housing – but we all know that affordable housing is defined as being 10 per cent below the market rate, and we know that at the moment in particular most people cannot afford that. The lack of ambition by this government to tackle real housing solutions is astounding. Given the generational housing crisis we find ourselves in, a site like this should be used for public housing. The current waiting list is sitting at more than 100,000 people, which is likely to balloon even further as this Labor government wants to knock down 44 public housing towers, which currently house more than 10,000 people. Minister, why won’t you allocate the VicRoads land in Kew to public housing?