Thursday, 28 August 2025

Ministers statements: housing

Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Minister for Housing and Building, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (12:09): The housing statement, as people would know, refers to the target of developing and building 800,000 homes in Victoria over the next decade. We want to make sure that in delivering that housing we are delivering housing which is fit for purpose, which is in the relevant configurations to meet the needs of our communities, which is affordable and which is available. We know that with the planning approvals and completion rates that we are seeing here in Victoria, the work outlined in the housing statement, including on planning reform, activity centres and targets, is working. We have more completions, more approvals and more commencements than other jurisdictions.

We are also forecast to achieve 98 per cent of our share of the 1.2 million homes pledged under theNational Housing Accord. 11,100 homes have been completed or are underway through our Big Housing Build and the Regional Housing Fund, and that includes more than 3700 new homes in regional Victoria. While we are getting on with the building, we are seeing the Liberals and the Greens getting together time and time again to block and to oppose the delivery of new housing for people who need it and who want it, including across their own electorates. A member for the Northern Victoria Region said – and who could forget it – in this place:

There is no point putting a very low income, probably welfare-dependent family in the best street in Brighton …

and then went on to refer to sneakers and to iPhones. Nothing typifies the approaches from those opposite quite like that particular quote. Those opposite are so obsessed with the idea of ‘not in my backyard’ that they will say that housing should not be developed too close to a cemetery, for example, which is what is happening with the Shadow Minister for Housing in the other place – what a disgrace. You are blocking. We are building.