Wednesday, 5 February 2025

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:24): (1373) My adjournment matter for the Minister for Housing and Building concerns the government’s clear unavoidable responsibility for Victoria’s housing crisis. The outlook for developers in our state is dire. There is no shortage of reasons. Each could be its own adjournment matter: planning, regulation, employment requirements, procurement restrictions, union activism, Big Build driven construction inflation and skilled worker shortages, and that is before we talk about the levies, fees, charges, premiums, duties, assessments, contributions – indeed the government’s whole thesaurus-inspired collection of money-raising, project-killing tax grabs. We know about these regulatory legal and financial obstacles, yet Labor ministers apparently consider them an unavoidable cost of doing business. The Urban Development Institute of Australia estimates a third of housing costs come from government charges. The sheer number and variety of charges somehow lets the government off the hook.

I want to highlight two specific issues and show how they apply to one housing development. It is in Rockbank in the Western Metropolitan Region, and it is another example of how Labor have slowly but surely hammered areas just like Werribee, as we have discussed today. This is not some theoretical site with imagined worst case scenarios, it is a real-life housing opportunity being strangled by government. It is houses unbuilt, prices escalating beyond the reach of first home buyers, dreams dashed.

Issue one is Melbourne Water, whose crippling lack of resources means that essential approvals take not days but can drag on for years. Melbourne Water’s engineer told the Rockbank developers their project was 13th of 13 in his queue and that many have been waiting for six to 12 months or more. This costs time but, more importantly, money. Across multiple developers, over 5500 housing lots are affected by this in the western growth corridor alone. The interest costs on the finance involved are massive. In this case it is $45 million yearly for an area with around 5500 housing lots. That is $8000 for every single house, simply due to Melbourne Water’s lack of capacity.

Secondly, the escalating MSA, the Melbourne strategic assessment levy, which is supposed to support native vegetation, has a disproportionate impact on development. On one particular Rockbank site the government wants $3.6 million for an area with 132 lots. That is $27,000 straight on the cost of every house. Shockingly, there is not even any native vegetation at the site. Minister, I ask you to investigate and publish a response to these two impediments, which are adding, when margins are included, $40,000 to simple houses for first home buyers.