Thursday, 6 March 2025

 Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (18:21): (1501) My adjournment is to the Minister for Housing and Building. There have been news reports this week that Victoria’s housing crisis is at a tipping point. People are camping in bushland near Bendigo. People are living out of their cars at Lake Weeroona. I have also been contacted about the homeless living behind Lansell plaza in Kangaroo Flat being given tents to live in. The homeless are living on the streets in the suburbs of Bendigo because there is nowhere else for them to go. The state government’s increased taxes and regulations are having a massive impact, adding to our current housing crisis. Real estate agents have again contacted me, desperate for reforms. It has become the norm for them to receive 90 applications for a one-bedroom unit in Bendigo. All the additional taxes and regulations that are being placed on rental providers are causing them to leave the property market, making less rentals available and leading to more people being forced onto the social housing waitlist, which has now ballooned to nearly 64,000 families in Victoria.

I note that the recently released Infrastructure Victoria draft plan calls for more development in areas with existing infrastructure, yet I am yet to receive a response from the government regarding the old Sandhurst Centre, an empty property in the centre of Bendigo that could be developed. It took 12 months to receive a response, which said, ‘This question should be directed to the Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts’ – 12 months. But it is land like this, close to hospitals and transport services, where progress could be made. On the streets here in Melbourne, metres from this Parliament, I walked past three people last night asleep on the pavement, so we know this issue is right across Victoria.

The Premier has also made reforms to the planning scheme and said that they will take planning powers from councils who try to block more homes being built. From the data, it appears as though councils are approving permits but there may be other reasons why homes are not being built. According to reports in the Age, Victoria has a lengthy roll call of taxes on land and property transactions and the Urban Development Institute of Australia calculates that property taxes make up more than 40 per cent of the total government tax take.

In 2021 a Big Housing Build project was announced for Virginia Hill in Eaglehawk. Sixty-four properties were demolished, and the land has sat vacant now for a couple of years with temporary fencing surrounding the site. The government plans to more than double the number of houses on the site, and local residents have raised concerns that the site may still be contaminated because it was formerly a mine site. The government website indicates that consultation is due to take place this year. The action I seek is for the government to share the findings of these soil studies at the site and to advise how and when key stakeholders and local residents can participate in the consultation process.