Wednesday, 27 August 2025

Bills

Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Amendment (Right to Housing) Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Anasina Gray-Barberio:

That the bill be now read a second time.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:39): I am very pleased to rise to speak on the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Amendment (Right to Housing) Bill 2025 introduced by Ms Gray-Barberio. It is a bill that seeks to make amendments to the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006, principally to insert provisions into that act relating to housing and to bring all the antecedent components of the application of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities to the administration of laws in the state of Victoria.

The bill is not particularly long, nor does it need to be. What is most striking though is that this is a bill that will not build a single home. It is not going to do anything to make housing more affordable. This bill will not help first home buyers with a deposit for their first home. It will not do anything to support the application of things like the Help to Buy schemes that are giving young Victorians and young Australians more support to get into the housing market. It will not do anything to improve the way our consumer laws work with respect to the operation of the property market. It will not improve the standards of rental properties in this state – it will not make them safer, it will not make them more livable – and it will do nothing to help renters make their tenancies more secure. This bill will do nothing to build more homes for more Victorians. But we know that, because that is not the point of the bill. This bill, despite its title, is not about housing and it is not really about rights. It is about clicks. It is about likes. It is about a social media strategy that is built on manufacturing outrage and is bereft of action. It is just another example of the way that the Greens party has approached the central question of how do we solve the housing crisis.

This Labor government has made it clear time and time again that we think you solve the housing crisis by building more homes. This bill does nothing to build more homes in Victoria. We also know that the Greens party, in proposing this bill today, are not really interested in building more homes. Yes, they have put this bill to the Parliament with a political strategy in mind, but their actions as representatives and as legislators in this place and others are about blocking housing, not building it. I have no doubt that in the course of today’s debate those are some matters that we will get into.

I do want to say at the outset that I think our position on this bill can be best summed up by this: this Labor government is not going to be taking advice from the Greens on how to fix the housing crisis, because their approach will not do a single thing. This bill will not do a single thing to build more homes for more Victorians. Labor is getting on with the job of building more homes for more Victorians, and that is exactly what our agenda is focused on, not the sorts of issues that seem to occupy the attention of the Greens.

On the many issues that I want to traverse in the course of the debate today, I want to start by just looking at some of the more technical issues, queries and questions that were raised about the provisions of this piece of legislation and whether it would do the job that it intends to do and whether in fact it is something that would add to the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities in Victoria. The report of the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee in relation to this bill, in Alert Digest No. 9 of 2025, details quite an interesting discussion about the implications of inserting the provisions in this bill into Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities and asks some questions about the framework that our Charter of Rights and Responsibilities was established under. Particularly – and I will quote the committee in its Alert Digest here – it says:

The Committee notes that clause 3 inserts a new section 12A into Part 2 of the Charter. The Committee notes that section 7(1) of the Charter provides that Part 2 ‘sets out the human rights that Parliament specifically seeks to protect and promote’.

However, the Committee notes that section 3 of the Charter defines ‘human rights’ to mean ‘the civil and political rights set out in Part 2’. The Committee notes the Explanatory Memorandum of the Bill for the Charter –

the explanatory memorandum of the bill for the charter, not this bill but the bill for the charter –

The purpose of this Charter is to establish a framework for the protection and promotion of human rights in Victoria. The human rights protected by the Charter are civil and political rights. They primarily derive from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 and are set out in Part 2, which follows a number of general provisions set out in Part 1. Part 3 of the Charter outlines the scheme by which human rights are protected by Parliament, courts and tribunals and public authorities.

Essentially it goes on to have a discussion about the distinction between those rights protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and those rights that are protected under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. For many that may seem a distinction in search of a difference, but particularly in the context of the Victorian charter of human rights, it was a matter that the Scrutiny of Regulations Committee felt that it needed to seek further information about from the proponent of the bill. I think it is a bit disappointing that the response provided by the member to SARC was a bit hand-wavy. It just kind of said it does not matter what the charter of human rights is trying to do with respect to human rights and just waved away their concerns. I just raise this issue because it was a matter that was raised by the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee and I felt in the context of the debate it was important to highlight.

I made a contribution at the start about the fact that what we have here is not really an attempt by the Greens to be supportive of the policy goal of building more homes in Victoria, because we know that they are not. We know that the Greens in Victoria have repeatedly – and the Greens nationally in the Commonwealth Parliament, particularly in the last few years – taken a determined strategy of policy to block the housing that the community desperately needs, particularly new social housing but not just that. It is difficult to believe that the Greens care about the issues that they purport to when they might purport to be interested in housing as a human right and want to bring legislation into the Parliament, generate outrage on social media and set tests for Labor members as to what they are going to do when this bill comes before the Parliament when their own actions not once, not twice but repeatedly have been to block more housing being built. If I had to choose between participating in performance or building more homes, I would always unashamedly be on the side of building more homes, not being part of a performance test that the Greens set out.

I found it particularly amusing because – this is an orchestrated campaign – of what the Greens did in the lead-up to today in introducing this bill. Legitimately, members of the Labor Party care a lot about housing. I certainly have spoken in this place a lot about housing. I think I have said time and time again that the way we fix the housing crisis is to build more homes. I am going to keep talking about housing for as long as I have got the privilege to sit within these walls on these benches. In the lead-up to today’s debate the Greens went and scurried and found other Labor members in this place and in the other place who also care a lot about housing, and they put together what I would call a montage. I think the kids these days would probably call it a supercut. It is a collection of the contributions that Labor members have made on the question of whether we think housing is a basic human right. They did that for clicks and likes. I think it is childish and cheap as a strategy and that it diminishes the importance of the issue that we are debating.

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

The reason that I think they did not take it seriously is because in one of the posts they put up they said, ‘Labor MPs have said that housing is a human right, but is it all talk? Our bill will put them to the test.’ This was the test. The slight problem they had with the montage was that in the post they put up, that collage of what Labor MPs this term have said did actually include someone who is not a member of this Parliament, who in fact retired at the last election. So I am a little hesitant to take seriously their purported attempts to take seriously an important issue, when they cannot even get their social media campaign right by making sure that the Labor MPs they are setting up for their test actually include people that are all members of this Parliament in this term. Despite what they have said in their posts, we cannot take them seriously. They keep making mistakes. The former member for Yan Yean featuring prominently on their social media posts I am sure supports housing, but she will not be subject to the false test they are trying to generate now.

The real test that we as members of Parliament need to consider is not whether or not we think housing is a human right. I do and many do. It is not whether we think that this bill will move the dial one inch on providing more homes for more Victorians; it will not. The real test that members of Parliament have as to whether they have got bona fides on the housing crisis, to solve the housing crisis, is what they do when it matters. When something is on the line, how do you vote? That is the test that people should be put to, that is the test that all members need to be accountable for and it is a test that members of the Greens fail time and time again. There are lots of examples I could go through, and I am sure others in this debate will do so as well, where we have seen the Greens opposed to the construction of more housing in Victoria.

I want to frame this part of my contribution with the words of Ms Gray-Barberio in her second-reading speech on this bill. It says:

… governments have a responsibility to intervene in ambitious and concrete ways …

basically to ensure everyone has a place to call home to fix the housing crisis. There are a lot of things I do not agree with Ms Gray-Barberio about, but I agree about that – that governments do have a responsibility to intervene in ambitious and concrete ways to fix the housing crisis. And that is what Labor is doing.

The Big Housing Build and the Regional Housing Fund – $6.3 billion – are delivering 13,000 new homes, with over 11,000 homes already completed or underway. In the 2024–25 financial year we built over 2400 pieces of social housing in this state. But it is not just on the social housing side, which is where this government in particular is making leaps and bounds; more broadly across the entire residential construction sector Victoria is leading the nation in approvals for new homes in this state. It is leading the nation in the construction and completion of new homes in this state – more than in New South Wales, which is the largest state in absolute terms. The biggest contributor to housing activity in this nation is Victoria. We are leading the way – and not by a little bit, by a lot. That just does not happen without government taking action to make sure homes can be built. The social housing does not get built without government investment and government action on things like planning.

We know that the Greens, as a political party, have a track record of opposing the construction of social housing in this state, particularly by Labor governments. When we think about the test that we need to set for members of this chamber – members of Parliament, representatives of the community – to decide whether they are serious about housing, the real test is whether, when it matters, they stand up against housing or for it. We know some of the new social housing that has been completed in my part of Melbourne in the last couple of years, which I have visited, is amazing. It is fantastic. In Ashburton there is the Markham estate. I have visited there with the former Minister for Housing and the local member Matt Fregon. The redevelopment of the Markham estate, the construction of the new social homes on the Markham estate, was opposed by the Greens and the Liberal Party, who teamed up in the last Parliament to knock off the planning approval that we gave.

In this Parliament we have seen the Greens opposing more social housing being built – again, in my part of the world in the Southern Metropolitan Region – at the Barak Beacon estate, where I think 89 homes are being redeveloped into more than 400 new homes on that site – a 43 per cent increase in the amount of social housing on the Barak Beacon site in Port Melbourne. Members of the Greens brought a petition in this place calling on the government to stop the project. They joined protests against the project. Why? That cannot have been because they thought that the people who were going to move into those new homes have a right to housing. They did it for clicks and likes. They did it because when it comes to the things that matter and when it comes to the tests that matter, the Greens are always on the side of no more housing.

We see it right now with the government’s plans to redevelop the 44 high-rise public housing towers in this state. Time and time again when they are given the opportunity to have more housing being built on well-located, well-serviced parcels of public land, with the sites that have been announced so far remaining in public hands, they have opposed it. They are opposed to that redevelopment. They are opposed to the new homes that are going to be built. They are opposed to those homes being more energy efficient. They are opposed to those homes being more accessible. They are opposed to the residents in those homes living, for example, in high-rise accommodation in buildings that have lifts that are serviceable by stretchers so that if they are sick and need to be taken out by an ambulance, they have got facilities that enable them to do that. They are opposed to all of that. But Labor is not. Labor wants to give those in our community, particularly the most vulnerable in our community, access to high-quality housing, and access to housing that meets their needs.

I want to talk a little bit about what the actions of the Greens, particularly their colleagues in Canberra, have done to slow down new social housing being built in Melbourne. We had the experience in the last federal Parliament where the former member for Griffith, and the former member for Melbourne as his leader, orchestrated a political strategy that was set out to deny the federal Labor government the ability to pass key legislation designed to help people get more housing, particularly designed to allow the creation of the Housing Australia Future Fund. The Housing Australia Future Fund is a $10 billion endowment into social housing for a generation. It is not about a one-year sugar hit to capital programs. It is about a generational investment, an endowment for the future to enable a consistent pipeline of social housing to be built. The Greens opposed it and opposed it and opposed it, and what that did was delay and delay and delay more social housing being built.

Eventually, the contradictions in the Greens’ obstruction of more housing being built got the better of them in the last federal Parliament. They came to their senses and they passed the bill, kicking and screaming. They did not want to do it. They passed the bill kicking and screaming. We know, as students of current political history, what happened to the architects of the Greens political strategy to oppose the construction of more social housing in Australia, in Victoria. I think it is a very salient lesson, and I hope that on one level our colleagues here in Victoria learn it. On another level, I am not confident that they will. But the implications of that delay were that projects that are now underway to build more social housing in the Southern Metropolitan Region, that would deliver action to provide homes for those who need it, were held up.

There is a site in Carnegie being funded by the Housing Australia Future Fund, where 99 dwellings are being built. Seventy-five per cent of the properties in the project will be allocated to the priority access list on the Victorian housing register, with 30 per cent allocated to homelessness with support, 30 per cent to housing special needs and 15 per cent to emergency management. Ninety-nine new dwellings in Carnegie are under construction now, funded by the Housing Australia Future Fund, that the Greens obfuscated and obstructed. If they had their way, those homes would not be built. We have got another one in Hampton East, with 77 homes being built just back from South Road and the Nepean Highway, delivering 77 homes over eight storeys. Again, 75 per cent of the properties in the project allocated to the eligible persons on the priority access list of the Victorian housing register. It is close to schools, it is close to trains, it is close to jobs, it is close to community support facilities – supported by the Housing Australia Future Fund, that was delayed, obstructed by the Greens.

I was down there last week, driving by, and saw just how quickly those dwellings are coming up out of the ground. It is sad that that facility is due to be completed in mid 2026. There is a real chance that if the Greens had not obstructed the Housing Australia Future Fund, projects like this that are due to open next year could have been opened this year. We could have had residents moving in to these types of developments had the Greens obstruction of social housing being built in this country not occurred during the last federal Parliament.

If we are trying to make tests for people about whether they are fair dinkum about giving more Victorians access to housing, about whether they are fair dinkum about caring about housing in this state, the test is not going to be, despite the Greens’ social media campaigns, whether Labor MPs who support giving more people more housing support the fundamental rights of people who live in that housing. The test is not whether we pass or do not pass a piece of stunt legislation that does nothing to deliver a single home in this state, that does nothing to help people buy a new home in this state, that does nothing to support renters in this state through more security or better rentals. This bill does none of that. The test is not whether we support something that does nothing; the test is whether we support something that takes action. That is the test that members of Parliament should be thinking about all the time. And that is why the Greens and the opposition are going to face more tests as to whether they support the development of more homes on government land here in Melbourne or whether they are going to continue to sign petitions and have protests that oppose the redevelopment of sites like Barak Beacon, about which they have brought petitions into this place saying ‘Don’t build more social housing on that site’. That is their action that they are accountable for.

And they will face another test when it comes to whether they support the redevelopment of the two towers at Elgin Street that have no-one living in them because of a catastrophic failure of the sewer stacks. They have to make a choice as to whether they support the continuing redevelopment of the walk-up estates that is dramatically increasing the amount of social housing. We heard evidence at one of our public hearings recently that the average increase in social housing on the redevelopment sites that we are seeing at the moment is close to 50 per cent. That is the choice, that is the test that exists for the Greens. If you are serious about fixing the housing crisis, if you seriously think that housing is a human right, you have got to support moves to build more housing. And if you do not support more housing being built in Victoria, if you do not support more social housing being built in Victoria, then all of your claims are hollow, and we should not believe a word that you say, because the only way that residents on the priority waiting list are going to find homes is if we build them for them. That is what Labor is going to do, and this bill will do nothing to help it.

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:09): I rise to speak on the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Amendment (Right to Housing) Bill 2025, a private member’s bill put forward by the Greens. It aims to establish a legally recognised right to adequate housing in Victoria and introduces new section 12A, which defines the scope and characteristics of adequate housing and affirms housing as a fundamental human right. Its purpose is to enshrine housing as a human right in Victorian law, to ensure housing policy and service delivery are guided by dignity, equality and inclusion, and to provide a legal foundation for individuals and communities to advocate for housing justice and challenge systemic barriers.

Mr Batchelor had some incredible talking points then, but it is such a shame that they were not anchored in reality. I am going to start off my contribution by placing on record some facts about housing in Victoria. When the coalition left government in 2014 there were 9990 families on the Victorian housing register waitlist – 9990. Fast-forward 11 years and there are now 66,117 families on the waitlist – that is families, not individuals. If we are quite conservative and just double that number, assuming that a family is two people – which is very conservative; it will be much more than that – that is one and a half MCGs full of Victorians on the waitlist. That is actually a huge, huge number. After more than a decade of Labor being in power, they have not reduced the amount on the waitlist – not even close. They have almost multiplied it by seven – unbelievable – from just shy of 10,000 to over 66,000 families.

Let us take a look at Labor’s Big Housing Build and its effectiveness. This project, and we heard Mr Batchelor talk about it before, has cost $6.3 billion – not million, billion dollars. You would hope that with that much of a burden to the taxpayer it would be quite a successful project. Well, as of June 2017 the total number of community dwellings was 13,479. As of June last year it was 15,964, so an increase of 2485. That is roughly 355 per year – nowhere near the 80,000 promised by Labor. I actually agree with Mr Batchelor in the sense that in order to really tackle the housing crisis we need to build more homes. But I think we need to be absolutely clear-eyed about this. You cannot just look at Labor’s talking points, you actually have to look at the statistics and measure them against what they are saying, and they just simply do not add up.

That aside, let us say 2485 is okay. But it does not meet the demand, and with a price tag of $6.3 billion, it is a lot. However, let us drill down a little bit further, because there are some nasty surprises in here. As of June 2017 the total number of public housing bedrooms was 161,153. Fast-forward 11 years and the total number is now 156,602. I do not know if you grasped that – that is almost 5000 less bedrooms. Under a decade of Labor, while they are talking about building more, we actually have almost 5000 less bedrooms. After a decade and over $6.3 billion charged to the taxpayer, we are ending up with less – not just a few, but thousands less. This is an unmitigated disaster.

I have started off with the facts there. The coalition will not be supporting this bill, for a few reasons. Let us not let the facts get in the way of a good story, or whatever they say. This bill, I believe, sets a dangerous precedent of endless charter expansions. It opens the floodgates to costly litigation and accelerates our drift towards a state of welfare dependence without economic freedom. Worse still, it will continue to burden the taxpayer while solving nothing.

This bill has a lot of ironies when you consider the Greens voting rights. They have the same double standards around various policies, and I am going to break some of those down. They claim to believe in sustainability and the right to food, yet they voted for the emergency services tax, which has destroyed farmers’ livelihoods and really crushed their ability to produce local sustainable food. I also think this bill represents a profound misdiagnosis of the housing crisis. The Greens have voted for very different policies that have created a crisis, and now I think this bill is pointing to the symptoms – mental health issues, family violence, addictions – as a justification for more government control, which is something that we on this side of the house fundamentally do not agree with.

We know of and celebrate the importance of home ownership to our democracy, and that is something that cannot be overstated. We on this side of the chamber are for home ownership, especially by society’s most vulnerable, but we believe that this is the wrong way of reaching this goal. When a Victorian owns a piece of land, no matter how small, they gain more than just shelter. They gain independence, a sense of responsibility and a stake in the future of this state. Home ownership fosters free and critical thinking, strengthens self-reliance and reinforces the values that are at the heart of a liberal democracy and are truly progressive. In contrast, I believe this bill threatens to make this state more a state of renters, specifically renters dependent on the state. I think that is what this bill is really about, and it is something that I just would not trust. In a liberal democracy the human right is to equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. This bill fundamentally undermines that principle by shifting responsibility for housing outcomes from the individual onto the state – worse still, a state that has proved it cannot be trusted to do what it says.

When we enshrine housing as a right in our charter we are not solving the housing crisis, we are creating legal uncertainty while avoiding the hard economic reforms that would actually deliver more homes. But the implications go far deeper than just housing alone. More fundamentally, this approach will keep expanding Victoria’s ever-expanding welfare system; it will just keep it growing and growing. How will we afford this when the government has worked so hard to destroy our finances and has left the economy in a state of complete disrepair? There is so much debt in this state that our children will be paying it off and our children’s children will be paying it off – and it is Victoria’s most vulnerable that will pay the biggest price. When people cannot build wealth, when they cannot invest and when they cannot create their own security through ownership, they become dependent on government provision – and that is not compassion, it keeps people enslaved. If people have the ability to create wealth, to break through and to make their own decisions, we end up in a much better situation.

Since 2014 Labor has introduced 61 new or increased taxes. The bulk of those are targeting the property sector. The 2024–25 state budget confirms that nearly half of Victoria’s tax revenue – so $21.5 billion – now comes from property taxes. This is not just unsustainable, it is destructive, and it adds enormously to the price of a home. I have spoken many times in this place about real estate agents saying that for every four rental properties that come on the market, once they sell only one returns to the market. That is because it is harder to have a rental property in Victoria than in any other state in Australia because of the tax burden. The Urban Development Institute of Australia has warned that these taxes are choking housing supply and affordability. Development has slowed, rental supply has stalled and Melbourne’s rental vacancy is at a historical low. It is causing a housing investment flight. Less investment means less housing and more demand, which means more expensive housing. You cannot tax your way to housing affordability. It is just not how it works, yet the Greens claim that housing policies benefit the wealthy. That is simply false. These are not abstract statistics. They represent families unable to find homes, young people locked out of the market and everyday mum-and-dad investors being squeezed out of their investment, which for many was their retirement nest egg. This is contrary to the Greens’ claims that housing policies enrich the wealthy. No, these sorts of economic environments affect absolutely every single one, and it is those who have housing insecurity that are affected most.

Victoria is now one of Australia’s poorest performing states. Household disposable income is 10 per cent below the national average. Labour productivity is the lowest in the country. Our debt is absolutely out of control. It is the highest in the nation. Net debt is actually projected to hit $194 billion by 2029, yet instead of fixing the housing crisis this government has wasted billions of dollars on infrastructure blowouts. Even a fraction of the waste could have built incredible amounts of social housing to help combat the issue we are talking about right here today.

I am going to skip forward, because I always write too much. This bill is not a solution, it is a symbolic gesture and one that distracts from the real economic reforms that we need. We must protect the right to equal opportunity and protect the environment that makes this flourish, not make promises with outcomes that we cannot deliver and not have talking points like we see from the Labor Party with statistics that are completely at odds with what they say. Housing is best supported by economic growth, investment and freedom to innovate, not by expanding the charter in ways that create legal uncertainty and burden public authorities. I believe this bill would be a step in the wrong direction, and we should be focusing on practical solutions. I am going to leave my contribution there. Like I said, the coalition will not be supporting this bill.

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:23): I rise today to speak in strong support of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Amendment (Right to Housing) Bill 2025. This bill seeks to enshrine the right to adequate housing in Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities – a step that is both overdue and I would say necessary. For decades governments at both state and federal levels have treated housing primarily as an asset and investment strategy – tax concessions for wealthy property investors, stamp duty discounts for luxury penthouses, negative gearing and capital gains tax – at the same time as we have seen severe reductions, for example, in welfare payments. This approach of private gain over public good has led to the crises that we see today: escalating homelessness, housing insecurity, soaring rents, impossible house prices and governments over-relying continually on the private market to provide housing.

The reality in this state is stark: more than 120,000 Victorians waiting for public housing, decades of underinvestment and neglect and a program of privatisation that has ravaged our public housing system. This state has the lowest proportion of public and community housing in the country, with demand expected to grow in the coming years. The Labor government’s callous plan, the plan to demolish our public housing towers, threatens to make this worse, displacing thousands of people and undermining long-established communities. I will be clear: housing is not an investment strategy, it is a fundamental human right central to human dignity, health, education, employment and community participation. Without a stable home, people cannot thrive and families cannot feel secure. This bill sets a course correction. It is about changing our approach to housing. Just as governments endeavour to ensure public health or education, they must act to guarantee access to secure, adequate and affordable housing.

A rights-based approach recognises that housing is not a privilege to be earned but a necessity for all people in this state, and international law affirms this principle. The right to adequate housing is recognised as a fundamental human right in several international human rights agreements, ratified by almost all national governments around the world. The right to housing is recognised in article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ratified by Australia in 1975 under Whitlam without reservations. However, this country has not embedded the right to housing into domestic law at the state or the federal level, even though we have accepted international obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right when we ratified it back in 1975. This is something that our country has been criticised for. Back in 2007 the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing criticised the Australian government for failing to uphold or implement this right. As Justice Connect has stated:

This means that many people in Australia don’t have access to affordable, secure housing and are often evicted into homelessness because our laws don’t protect them.

The right to adequate housing has also been enshrined in national laws across the globe, as I have mentioned. More than 50 countries, including South Africa and France, have enshrined the right to housing in their constitutions, and countries such as Canada and Scotland have enshrined the right to housing via legislation. In the ACT the Human Rights (Housing) Amendment Bill 2025, which was a Greens bill seeking to enshrine the right to housing in the ACT’s charter, was recently the subject of an inquiry. The inquiry report, which came out just last month, recommended that the ACT Legislative Assembly pass that bill. As one of only three states and territories to have introduced a legislated human rights charter, Victoria plays a significant role in leading the country on human rights compliance. This is an opportunity for us to show national leadership. As the UN special rapporteur on housing noted in a 2014 report, state governments are crucial to realising the right to housing, as:

Forced evictions and discriminatory exclusion from housing often result from decisions or policies adopted at the local or subnational levels.

Enshrining the right to adequate housing in our charter would mean that Parliament would have to take the right into account when making laws. Public authorities like Homes Victoria, for example, would have to act compatibly with the right and take it into account in decision-making, and our courts would have to interpret and apply laws compatible with the right. Yes, we have existing charter rights that have the potential to protect aspects of some people’s housing realities. For example, we have got the right to not have one’s home unlawfully or arbitrarily interfered with and we have got the right to property, but they do not protect people who do not have a home in the first place. Including a right to housing in the charter would provide this much-needed protection.

This state’s homelessness crisis has long been a cause for serious concern. The 2016 census recorded 24,817 people experiencing homelessness in Victoria. The 2021 census recorded 30,660 people, and we know that it is highly likely that these statistics are a serious undercount. The inquiry into homelessness in 2021 heard that about two-thirds of people who experience homelessness do not even seek assistance from homelessness service providers. Evidence like this directly contradicts claims that Melbourne, our city, is among the most livable cities in the world. Homelessness or insecure housing does not simply leave people without a place to call home. It is directly linked with many outcomes we guard against in our current charter. Homelessness or insecure housing leaves people without privacy. It is associated with poor mental and physical health. It makes it near impossible to take part in public life, to hold down a job or to stay in school. It can result in the removal of children from their families, and it makes it that much harder to avoid exploitative and unsafe situations such as family violence, which is a leading driver, we know, of homelessness in this state.

Enshrining the right to adequate housing would help to fully realise these other vital human rights that our charter protects. The term ‘adequate housing’ encompasses so much more than simply a roof over someone’s head. It is a term that recognises that housing stability underpins human dignity. This bill outlines that adequate housing means housing that is accessible to all, genuinely affordable, structurally sound, safe, culturally appropriate, free from discrimination, located close to employment, services and community infrastructure and able to provide secure tenure and protection from unfair eviction. Including the right to housing in the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act was a key recommendation in the Legal and Social Issues Committee’s 2021 final report following its inquiry into homelessness in Victoria. The government’s response was that this recommendation was under review. Two years later, in 2023, a key recommendation following the final report from the inquiry into the rental and housing affordability crisis in this state was that the Victorian government investigate enshrining the right to housing in the Victorian charter of human rights, including considering advice from the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner. The government responded that this recommendation was also under review.

Some parts of the community that have called for the enshrining of a right to housing in Victoria’s charter include the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, the Victorian Ombudsman, Tenants Victoria, Victorian Council of Social Service, Per Capita, the Human Rights Law Centre, the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, the Youth Affairs Council Victoria, a former Supreme Court justice the Honourable Kevin Bell, Dr Bill Swannie, the Centre for Urban Research, Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, the Council to Homeless Persons, the Housing for the Aged Action Group, the Victorian Public Tenants Association and Catholic Social Services Victoria, to name a few.

Enshrining the right to adequate housing in our state’s charter is overdue. It is essential. Housing is not optional. It is as fundamental as food, water, healthcare and education. When we fail to ensure access to housing, we fail to protect human dignity. This should not remotely be a partisan issue, because this is a social imperative. This bill echoes calls from countless experts. Passing this bill would fulfil recommendations from multiple parliamentary inquiries that I have mentioned. It would bring our state into alignment with our country’s obligations under international human rights law, and it would be an important move towards a more just and more equitable housing system. I absolutely commend this bill to the house.

Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:33): I also rise to make a contribution on this bill, the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Amendment (Right to Housing) Bill 2025. It is, again, the wont of the Greens to move a bill like this and talk about housing as if the government has done nothing about it and has never done anything about it. But if you look back through history – and I am a student of history, and many on the government benches are students of history – there is a long and proud legacy of Labor governments providing housing for vulnerable people. It is disappointing but not surprising, the rhetoric that comes from the Greens when we talk about this bill. The whole debate is mischaracterised. It is really par for the course in terms of them wanting to spread misinformation, casting doubt on the government’s actions. Of course they will say things like, ‘Why don’t you work with the Greens?’ But they do not want to work with us. What they want to do is attack us and continually point out things that are not true.

What I want to do is talk a little bit about what is happening. I could go into the history of why we have a problem with housing. I am going to be very careful not to use any of the Greens’ rhetoric, because what I have also seen in the last week is the Greens want to hunt through snippets of Hansard recordings and put them on social media and attack people on the government benches who have used particular terms. That is really disappointing, because I think all of us in this chamber – well, some of us, maybe more on these government benches than others – want to help people with housing. We want to provide them with secure, stable housing. It is not in anyone’s interest to have people not have access to housing. But again the social media grabs, the pot shots – I do not know, the Greens kind of think that is going to entice people to vote for them. I do not know what it is. It just comes off as nothing other than juvenile and desperate. But we will let them do them. But nevertheless, if you look at the history of housing it is really a good thing now that we have a willing partner in Canberra in the federal Labor government who is now going to be working with Victoria on ensuring that not only do we get our fair share of infrastructure funding but we are going to get support for the housing bill that we are embarking on. If you look at the history, the Commonwealth government actually had a stake in providing public housing, and they still do. But if you look at what happened under conservative governments, conservative federal governments sold off housing at a rate of knots and did not replace it. So that is the way in which they have had a vacuum in this policy space that has contributed to the shortage of housing.

Also the type of housing that people want access to now has changed. Post war there were a lot of people who were seeking family homes –three-bedroom homes and the like – but what we see now is that the types of homes that are most in demand are single-bedroom dwellings, and a lot of the stock that is still on the public record has aged out, like the public housing towers. So our government is taking strong action to work in that space to make sure we provide homes that are modern and fit for purpose and meet the needs of people who need access to housing.

I might remark on the housing needs in my area, because I think a lot of the focus on housing in this debate, certainly from the Greens, is all on the activity that happens inside the goats cheese curtain. But I can tell you, President, that in my region – and I know we share the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region – one of the fastest growing cohorts of homeless people is women over 55. Not only is it about family violence – there are high rates of family violence that exist in my region – but also women are retiring in poverty for a variety of reasons, whether it is because they have taken time out of the workforce to care, have not had access to economic equality or have not been able to generate the savings that perhaps their male counterparts have. Now they are post 55, their marriages might be breaking up or whatever and they do not have the same asset bank that others might. Then they find themselves needing to rely on public housing, and there is no shame in that at all.

I do not have housing towers in the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region. I asked a question on the public record of one of the witnesses in a hearing for the Legal and Social Issues Committee’s inquiry into housing, which was: what are older women telling some of these community organisations or entities that have popped up around the Greens campaign about housing? I am telling you right now that very few women over 55 are talking to them, because there is a direct focus on a certain demographic which fits nicely with the Greens. But women over 55 want safe and secure housing. They might have needs in regard to disability, housing safety, security or tenure. They may still need to be working but may not be working in secure jobs and the like. So when we talk about housing we have got to make sure we have got the right wraparound supports for people as well and not just a one-size-fits-all approach.

It would be very easy if you were to take the Greens line of rhetoric about ‘We’ve just got to do this and get on with it.’ Well, it is easy just to say that, but we need to make sure we are providing the right housing that people need and that it is accessible in terms of disability access and it supports whatever stage of life those people are at. They need to have the right wraparound supports to ensure that that housing placement does not fail, because whilst some people are placed into public housing or social housing, if the wraparound supports are not there the placement fails. It is more complex than the Greens would actually have you believe.

I am just going to talk about the facts, because I think it is important to talk about the facts in terms of what this government is actually doing and has been doing.

Ryan Batchelor interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: That is right. Mr Batchelor’s interjection is exactly right – the Greens will not do it. All they want to do is criticise and throw cheap shots at us and do silly things on social media, which actually does nothing in terms of putting a shovel in the ground or putting bricks on mortar to physically build houses. It does absolutely nothing other than waste time. Under the Big Housing Build and Regional Housing Fund, more than 11,100 homes are complete or underway and over 6300 households have moved in or are about to move into their brand new homes. I want to say that again; it is important. Under the Big Housing Build and the Regional Housing Fund – so it is not just housing in the city inside the goat’s cheese curtain but housing in and all around Melbourne and Victoria – 11,100 homes are complete or underway and 6300 households have moved in or are about to move into their brand new homes, because people deserve modern, fit-for-purpose homes. They deserve to have energy-efficient homes, so if you need to heat or cool your home, you are not spending exorbitant amounts of money actually doing that. We know that some of the housing stock that was built in the past did not particularly have those sorts of things in mind, so we have modern housing that is more energy efficient. People are entitled to that; they are entitled to live in modern and fit-for-purpose homes.

There were 56,405 residential building approvals in Victoria in the last 12 months to June, which is 18,500 more than Queensland and 7800 more than New South Wales, so the facts speak for themselves when you look at how many building approvals have been in the system. Victoria, under the Allan Labor government, is forecast to reach 98 per cent of its share of the housing accord target of 1.2 million dwellings. As you can see, not only are we leading the nation in terms of building, we are the only state or territory that even comes close to reaching our share of the target. Our government is indeed doing the heavy lifting when it comes to putting more housing into the system.

Again, we do not just build homes. As I said earlier, we can put bricks and mortar on the ground, we can put shovels in the ground, but we also need to make sure we work hard to get people into them. So 34 per cent of the nation’s expenditure on homelessness services actually happens right here in Victoria. That is not because homelessness looks significantly different here when compared to other states but because we are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to making sure we get people into housing and working on making sure that that placement sticks. It is about our commitment to prevention and early intervention. Our government provides Victorians with the support they need before they fall into homelessness.

Homelessness can be persistent or it can be intermittent. There are a variety of circumstances where things might pop up and for whatever reason, one way or another, you find yourself without secure housing. As I said, it could be a lifelong situation – people may have mental health conditions or people may just not feel comfortable or secure in the housing placement that they have. There will be people who fall in and out of that, but that is why it is important to make sure we have wraparound supports for people who are experiencing homelessness. We have here in Victoria our nation-leading Housing First program, which as I said, not only provides people with a home but also provides them with the wraparound supports that they need to address the sometimes very complex and interconnected issues which might have led them to experience homelessness in the first place. That is an important distinction to make as well.

The other thing I want to talk about in terms of facts is the disappointing track record that the Greens have on this. I want to go through some of the facts on the record and talk about some of the blocking actions of the Greens and how they say on the one hand that they care about housing and want to support it, but they have blocked housing at every turn and every opportunity. Let me talk a little bit about that. In 2017 Greens councillors in the City of Darebin led the vote against the development of new social housing dwellings at the vacant Huttonham estate site. The Greens led a protest against that development. In 2020 a development at Harvest Square in Merri-bek, which has since delivered 119 social homes in that municipality, which has a rate of homelessness higher than the state average, was opposed by four Greens councillors. It is on the record – opposed by four Greens councillors. In Melbourne’s north, Darebin council’s Greens were so opposed to providing homes to vulnerable Victorians that planning approval for the Oakover Road development was taken out of their hands.

In the case of the Oakover Road development, the Allan Labor government again needed to intervene to ensure that homes were built. What we built were 99 energy-efficient, safe and secure social homes as well as 197 market homes. Again, we had to intervene because there was such opposition to this from the Greens. At the Markham estate in Ashburton new housing went through the entire planning process only for the Greens to team up with the Liberals in that example and revoke it in the Parliament. In 2020 the member for Richmond in the other place, as the mayor of the City of Yarra, voted against building 60 social and 40 affordable homes – but the government is bad, the government is wrong and we do nothing on housing. We continually take strong and principled action to make sure we build homes. You can see the history: the Greens continually block housing.

I am sure my speech will be chopped up and put all over social media and taken out of context. I know the President will then have to deal with me writing to him and making a request for it to be taken down, because I will. I am sick to death of the garbage that comes out of the Greens on this issue. If only there were real transparency.

Whether it is opposing individual projects like the one that would turn an empty sand and gravel factory in Brisbane into 381 residential apartments because there would be too many car parks, as Stephen Bates, the former member for Brisbane, did or, more seriously, whether it is slowing down the deployment of the Housing Australia Future Fund for months, it is quite outrageous. I am not sure what the end game is for the Greens here other than just to try and slow things down and say the government is taking no action when really the reality of it is that their actions through their constant blocking and through their opposition, both locally and at a state level, mean that the government has to work incredibly hard to keep the momentum going and to make sure that we build the homes that people need. That is exactly what we are doing. Let us be very clear: the Housing Australia Future Fund is already delivering over 5300 homes for Victoria alone, with billions of dollars of investment flowing into our state, and that is what the Greens blocked for months.

The clock is against me; I have got maybe only 30 seconds. Again, what I hope I have done in my contribution today is highlight some facts, which is important because in this debate there is so much misinformation that is put out there by the Greens, but also highlight the very poor track record of the Greens in blocking any attempts on housing.

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:48): I will not be lectured by the Greens on human rights. The Greens supported and enabled, without any evidence, one of the biggest human rights abuses in Victorian history. Let us go through it. I used to be a big fan of the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, but I saw what happened when the rubber hit the road during the pandemic – the charter failed. It did not protect the rights of Victorians. When rights are limited by the government, that limitation is meant to be proportionate. At least the government has the excuse that they might have had executive privilege. They might have had access to these charter assessments. The Greens did not. I constantly, over the entire term of the last Parliament, asked for these charter assessments. We never got anything at all demonstrating proportionality except when the pandemic legislation came out and they came up with these summaries, which frankly were rubbish.

Let us go through it. Section 10 of the charter, ‘Protection from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’, subsection (c) says:

subjected to medical or scientific experimentation or treatment without that person’s full, free and informed consent.

The Greens enabled ostracising Victorians who did not take medicine that was dictated by the state. We had teenagers that could not go into stores to buy uniforms. They had to get changed outside the store because of the vaccine passports. The Greens supported that. That was a human rights abuse in my view. ‘Freedom of movement’ – do I even need to talk about this? We had the ring of steel, the border closures. People were locked in their homes. The Greens supported that. They never saw the proportionality. They supported it anyway.

‘Freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief’, in particular subsection (2):

A person must not be coerced or restrained in a way that limits that person’s freedom to have or adopt a religion or belief in worship, observance, practice or teaching.

The churches, synagogues and mosques were closed, and those that attempted to go in and practise their religious observances were arrested.

‘Freedom of expression’, in particular subsection (2):

Every person has the right to freedom of expression which includes the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, whether within or outside Victoria and whether –

orally; or

in writing, or

in print …

There were ladies arrested on the street for carrying signs, standing by themselves. The Greens supported and enabled this human rights abuse.

‘Taking part in public life’ – I can speak personally about this one. It states:

Every person in Victoria has the right, and is to have the opportunity, without discrimination, to participate in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

Every eligible person has the right, and is to have the opportunity, without discrimination –

…

to have access, on general terms of equality, to the Victorian public service and public office.

The Greens voted to expel members of Parliament who did not take medicine dictated by the state or chose to not hand over their paperwork. I was in that category. Four members of Parliament were expelled, with the support of the Greens.

Section 21, ‘Right to liberty and security of person’, states:

(2) A person must not be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention.

Again, I can speak to personal experience on this. On Cup Day in 2020 the police arbitrarily detained around about 400 people because they were standing outside. Apparently they were breaching restrictions. The Greens had no evidence of proportionality, but supported it anyway. Therefore I would say under section 21(2) it was also a breach.

‘Humane treatment when deprived of liberty’ – we have talked a lot about the housing towers, haven’t we? The housing tower lockdown was one of the saddest and most awful episodes of the pandemic. The Greens were supporting the government’s emergency restrictions. That was investigated by the Ombudsman, and the Ombudsman came to the conclusion – she agreed with me – that what happened in the housing towers was a breach of human rights. One of her recommendations was to ensure, when people are deprived of liberty – if we, God forbid, ever have another housing tower lockdown – that people have access to fresh air and exercise. It is a very, very simple thing. The Libertarian Party put forward an amendment when the emergency powers were amended. We put through an amendment to guarantee fresh air and exercise for people that were deprived of liberty. The Greens opposed it. They opposed fresh air and exercise for people locked down in housing towers. Maybe people should tell the people in the housing towers that the Greens were not really their friends during the pandemic.

With regard to incorporating these rights into the charter, there was a review by the Scrutiny and Regulations Committee in 2011. It directly says – about what the Greens are doing here – that there were good reasons not to do it. It states:

… SARC considers that there are powerful reasons not to expand the Charter in its current form with ESC rights found in the ICESCR …

There is a bigger problem here around what is a right in the first place. The charter is actually pretty good in that most of the rights are what are termed negative rights. This is what Libertarians believe in. A negative right is something that you are born with. It is inalienable – freedom of speech, religion, these sorts of things. Governments can choose to protect these rights or choose to infringe those rights. What the Greens are doing is trying to introduce things that they think are human rights – things that sound nice, like housing. Of course it sounds nice. Everyone wants housing, why can’t it be a human right? But it imposes obligations on the state. This is the problem here. One of the good things is when the charter was originally designed they did not do this. That is why we should not support this bill. I do not trust the Greens philosophical view of rights. They view rights as everything that they like is a human right and everything that they do not like should be banned. We should oppose this bill.

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:55): I also rise to speak on the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Amendment (Right to Housing) Bill 2025. I have listened to a lot of the debate, and I have some conflicting thoughts, having read the bill myself. Whilst I understand that it has come from the Greens and the Greens are very inconsistent in what they represent and what they stand for, the one thing that stands out to me in this is the right for housing for people. I understand that it does put obligations on the government, but that is where I want to take this discussion. I want to go to the fact that this government is actually failing.

It is mind-boggling to me that since I mentioned in the housing inquiry about the Menzies government’s provision of public housing, people have actually interfered with AI by having a number of think tanks go in there to change how AI comes out with different results than it did a couple of weeks ago. So I want to go back to what Menzies actually stood for when Menzies started the Liberal Party, when the Liberal Party took over after the Second World War, and why Menzies had a heart for people to have homes. Ultimately, yes, he wanted to improve the opportunity for all Australians to be able to have that Australian dream and own their own home, but at the same time he recognised the dignity of human life and that people deserved to be able to be in housing. He went on to make sure that our soldiers who returned home without anything would be able to have the right to have somewhere to live. He went on to make sure that those who were struggling because of what had happened with a depression and a world war and those who were single mothers would have somewhere to live. Public housing was not frowned upon by a Liberal government even though it was not the preferred option. The preferred option was to allow as many people as possible to be able to have the Australian dream and to own their own home. That is something that Liberals still feel very, very strongly about.

It is really interesting that the Labor government are attempting to disguise some of their ideas that they are trying to come up with – to allow people, for instance, to purchase a home with a less than 10 per cent deposit – as if they were something that they had started to come up with, these different schemes. But the reality is it came up through a Liberal Menzies government. The Liberal Menzies government wanted to make sure that every Australian could actually afford to buy a home, so there was an increase in the purchase of homes, but there was also the provision of public housing, affordable housing. I have to say that under this government there is no affordable housing, as they knock down these towers and have people sleeping on bits of cardboard boxes on the pavement all over Victoria. It is an absolute disgrace that there are girls and young men having to go and prostitute themselves to get housing and a roof over their head in the state of Victoria because this government is failing Victorians every single day.

Look, I have read the bill. I do not know how many people actually go out of their way to read these bills that they talk about, but it is really interesting to me that not many people seem to read the bills that they talk about. Number one, it simply says:

Every person has the right to adequate housing.

Honestly, in Victoria what breaks my heart is to see that so many Victorians – it is not even that they do not have the right – do not have the ability or the accessibility to be able to have housing. It is a significant omission of this government. It has failed Victorians. It has failed to provide adequate housing. It has failed to provide the opportunity.

If I was to look at things in my area, let us have a look at Frankston. The median house rent is now over $550 a week. This is a figure that has risen by 10 per cent in the past year alone.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.