Friday, 14 November 2025

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (19:39): I am honoured to be the final speaker on this bill. I have seen some dumb stuff come through this Parliament in my time here. This is not the most stupid thing I have seen, but it is right up there. This government is really good at selling the sizzle. You can hear the steak sizzling in the kitchen and you can smell it and it is really tempting and really nice, but when they serve it up it is tough as an old boot and no-one can eat it. A good example is the government saying they were going to get machetes off our streets – ‘We’re going to ban machetes.’ Of course everyone wants to ban machetes, don’t they? No-one wants machetes on the street. What did we get? Machete bins. Everyone laughs at this. It is absolutely ridiculous.

I thought the government had sort of come to their senses. Now, many times we have seen stupid socialist ideas from the Greens, like price controls and rent controls and this sort of thing. To their credit the government has resisted these things. The government have shown some sort of sense about economics and said, ‘We don’t really want to end up like Venezuela. Well, not yet anyway. So we’re not going to go out and have citizens go and kill pets in the streets for food and stuff because we’re not that desperate just yet.’ But for some reason they have decided that they want to get involved in petrol prices. They think they are smarter than the big evil petrol companies that give us the energy that we need to travel to work, for goodness sake, and go on holidays and stuff and that by interfering in the market they are going to somehow make it cheaper for motorists. I am going to tell you for a start it is not going to work. In fact the Commonwealth Treasury issued caution against this. They said that the states should be cautious about going down this path, as it is more likely to distort a competitive market, and indeed it will.

Let us have a think about how this works. What the government is proposing is that at 6 o’clock in the morning, every day, petrol stations have to declare a price, and this price has to be the maximum price that they have throughout the day. They are only allowed to reduce prices during the day; they are not allowed to raise them. I remember years ago someone was talking to me about the stock market. They said, ‘If only we could just ban people from selling at a lower price, if only everyone only sold at a higher price, everyone would make money.’ This is just as stupid as that idea.

What will happen is the petrol stations will set their prices at 6 in the morning. They are only allowed to lower them during the day and then the price will reset at 5:59 the next morning. What do we think will happen when this works? I know because I have spoken with a few people who run petrol stations. In fact they run chains of petrol stations. Here is what will happen. They will need to incorporate risk because they are only allowed to set their maximum price once during the day. They cannot act in a competitive free market. They will have a restricted market where they can only reduce prices. Of course everyone will go in with a really, really high price at 6 in the morning. Who are going to be the poor schmucks that buy petrol at 6 in the morning? Only the people that are really desperate.

Harriet Shing: I am that poor schmuck.

David LIMBRICK: You are going to get ripped off, Ms Shing, because anyone that buys petrol at 6 in the morning is going to be ripped off basically. What they will do is throughout the day they will watch their competitors and they may or may not reduce. But because they are all going to have this fat built in, overall prices will be higher for much of the day. If you are thinking about this, everyone knows when the cheapest time of day is to buy the petrol. We all should know: 5:59 in the morning. Everyone knows that every day 5:59 in the morning is when you will get the cheapest petrol. What will happen is petrol stations will set their prices much higher than they normally would in the morning because they know they can only reduce the prices. Then no-one who is paying attention to the market will be buying petrol in the morning. In fact the only people that will be buying petrol in the morning are people who are desperate because they have let their car run down to empty and they will know that they are getting ripped off. In fact I have spoken to some petrol stations. They said they are even considering closing in the morning because it will be so dumb.

They will need to report these prices through to the government, as if the government monitoring it will somehow make it cheaper for everyone. But this sort of interference in the market we know is stupid. We already know the way to get the cheapest prices is to have a highly efficient market – this is creating a more inefficient market – and a highly competitive market. If the government want to have cheaper prices, they should make things more competitive, not disrupt with market controls like they are trying to do here. Of course petrol stations will be able to deal with this; they will have to price it into their initial price that they have to do at the start of the day. But I am very disappointed that the government would resort to this. I know that there are some people in the government who have some understanding of economics, and I am very surprised that they would go down this route of trying to control prices like this. I look forward to seeing the machete bin of the petrol market produced by this government, because this steak is going to be as tough as a boot, I can tell you that.

The other thing that the government wants to do is interfere in the rental market. Of course the sizzle on this is great. They are going to make things great for renters, they are going to make things better for renters and all this sort of stuff. Well, the biggest problem that renters have is that there are not enough rentals available, and the reason that there are not enough rentals available is because the government keeps interfering in the market. Landlords do not want to be in the business of being a landlord. In fact I have spoken to a number of accountants, and a large part of their business is from people who used to be in the landlord business getting out of the landlord business because they hate it; they do not want to be landlords anymore.

We actually know how to make rentals available and rents cheaper – and that is through deregulating the market. We have good evidence of that, because another country, which I watch very closely because they have an awesome president in President Milei, Argentina, had a problem with rentals as well. Unfortunately, they suffered under a socialist government for many years. They were not quite eating their pets, but they were very poor and they had very large problems with rentals, with availability and no-one could afford them. Of course they had price controls. They had price controls on food, and they had price controls on rentals and everything like that. What President Milei – the first libertarian president in the world – did was he went in and totally deregulated the rental market. Rental availability absolutely soared overnight and prices dropped by 20-odd per cent, because all of a sudden people felt like they wanted to be part of that market and they were not deterred from participating in that market. They solved a large part of their housing problem almost overnight by deregulating rentals.

But of course the government think that they can control everything and that if they can twist the knobs and pull the levers, they will make everything better. Rarely is that the case, especially when you are interfering with markets. What we see in this bill are two market interventions, with wonderful sizzle. I am sure they smelt great when they were marketed out to people, but when the reality hits, when motorists go to buy their petrol in the morning at 6 am and realise that they are getting ripped off – and they will realise that, because lots of people will be telling them that they are getting ripped off, including me; we will be pointing out how the government is ripping them off – and when they cannot find a rental and the government and the Greens try to blame the evil landlords, we will be pointing out that it is the government interfering in the market that has caused the rental shortages. That is why you have got the queues; that is why you have got the high prices.

The Greens want to institute price controls here. They saw people eating pets on the streets in Venezuela and thought, ‘We should be doing that too. We want to eat pets in Victoria.’ Well, we are not that bad yet, but I do not know. If the government keeps trying to implement policies reminiscent of the Greens, maybe we will end up there. Look, I have seen some sparks of economic prowess from the government. I have seen it here and there; I can see it historically. You might be surprised, but lots of libertarians actually have a lot of respect for the Hawke–Keating governments and what they did in deregulation. They actually did some of the best free market reforms in Australian history. You might be surprised to hear that. Unfortunately, modern Labor does not seem to be really doing much of that and seems to be more interested in listening to Greens policies.

I will tell you this: this steak is going to be tough. Despite whatever sizzle you have been telling the public about it, once it gets served up, they are not going to like it. They are not going to like their expensive petrol. They are not going to like their queues for rentals and high rental prices. The Greens want to do an amendment here to limit rent increases. Iron law of economics: everyone knows that what happens when you limit prices is you end up with shortages. What the Greens are trying to do here is create more homeless. That is not their intent of course but you should never judge economic policy by its intent, you should judge it by its consequences. Greens policy on housing is to create more homeless people. Labor’s policy here on petrol is to make travelling for motorists more expensive.

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Minister for Housing and Building, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (19:50): Well, you know what, I am not the member for Nepean, but I am going to return serve. I wish I could say I am going to be here all week, but hopefully I am not going to inflict that on anybody, and the good staff here at Parliament will be able to go and discover a world beyond our mahogany-panelled walls. There have been a few things in this evening’s wideranging debate that I do want to cover off before we get into what I hope will be a mercifully expeditious committee stage, noting, I think, that there is one amendment being proposed – not by you, Mr Limbrick, which is a shame. I would have thought that perhaps, were you to really embrace full throttle – excuse the petrol pun – the level of enthusiasm that you brought to your speech tonight here, you might have actually committed something to writing as far as what you would like to see by way of changes to this legislation. But never mind.

What I want to touch on this evening in terms of the sizzle, as you have put it, is the fact that information is really important in helping people to make informed decisions about when and how to spend their money, and here in this place we talk a lot about the importance of accurate and timely and objective information in helping people to exercise the power of the spend. That goes as much to managing a household budget as it does to anything else – and Mr Limbrick, you did refer to the suckers. I think you said ‘schmuck’. I do take that as a bit of a badge of honour, because in my trusty 2015 Ford Territory – I note that it is not the most efficient vehicle in the universe, but having said that, it will be taken from my cold, dead hands. I would like to say that it is important to make sure that when you are filling up at the bowser, you are doing so in a way that means you are not incurring any bigger cost at the end of it all because of the type of information that might enable you to make more informed choices.

So we have already had phase 1 of the fair fuel plan, and we launched the Servo Saver on 15 October. There is now a requirement for reporting of that information in real time. Not reporting within 30 minutes is now an offence. Those prices go straight into the Servo Saver so that motorists like you, Mr Limbrick, can actually see –

David Limbrick interjected.

Harriet SHING: You are a motorist; that is good to know. So this will –

David Limbrick interjected.

Harriet SHING: You do drive a Territory? See, I thought we had nothing in common, Mr Limbrick, but we are finding more and more things to agree on as the evening goes on.

One of the things that we do know is really important is that real-time information is actually going to be a significant factor in helping people to decide when and how they might fill up. Until now, we have actually seen a really patchy approach to fuel reporting in Victoria, and this is about making sure that through Servo Saver we have got that total coverage – that it applies to every fuel provider, that it is not advertiser funded. This is where, again, that stands in contradistinction to a number of the other apps or groups that are not necessarily an accurate reflection of what is happening in the market. And that then in turn helps people to manage their budgets, helps people to work out how and where they will spend their money. Whether you are going to spend 20 bucks on one fill-up or you are going to get a full tank because it is 20 cents a litre cheaper will be something that you can make an informed decision on based on the information that you have available to you.

The next phase is the fuel cap. This is about capping the maximum fuel price once a day for 24 hours. Now, as you quite rightly pointed out, Mr Limbrick, this is about making sure that the cap is set at an upper threshold. If people want to reduce the cost of petrol, then that is fantastic. That then means there is nothing stopping you in a competitive environment with market tension, with the opportunity for people in those market settings to be able to attract a volume of consumer that in fact gets a better return on their investment as a consequence of being able to drive prices down. We do see that happen in any number of different settings, Mr Limbrick, and you would know that whether it is buying an ice cream or buying a couch there are certain ways in which competition can be encouraged. Therefore market forces can be at play in a way that is of benefit to consumers rather than placing upward pressure, whether it is on commodities or whether it is on something as luxurious as a steak with some sizzle.

One of the things that we are also doing is making sure that people have advance notice when it comes to the surprise factor at the pump, and that then means that in addition to being able to make decisions in time we are also in a position to be able to say that there are penalty units that will be in force where people do not register, where they do not report their prices, where they sell above that cap or where they increase prices during the 24-hour period. The cap is intended to start next year, and Mr Limbrick, I will be looking forward to seeing you take full advantage of that cap. I know that you do value accurate information, and I am looking forward again to hearing from you about how your Territory and mine are the beneficiaries of better decision-making. For the record, we do not co-own a Territory; we have two distinct Territorys.

David Limbrick: Mine is an older one.

Harriet SHING: Yours is an older one, Mr Limbrick, and older cars are greater guzzlers of petrol, so therefore you would know that filling up more frequently costs more money. So again, these are the sorts of initiatives that are intended to benefit people just like you, Mr Limbrick.

One of the other tranches to this legislation is the portable bond scheme. I do not want to give you all of the spotlight and the refracted spotlight on your contribution, Mr Limbrick. When we talk about renters rights, though, we have overhauled the Residential Tenancies Act 1997. I think we are now at about 150 changes to the Residential Tenancies Act, which absolutely is a lot, Mr Limbrick, and that has been done for a very specific purpose: to create an opportunity for rental relationships to be established, to operate, to be preserved and to be equitable; to have a framework in place that also creates the setting for a meaningful landscape that encourages people to be renters; to provide people with a ban on underquoting or rental bidding; to provide people with services and support around access to changes; pet ownership; and in addition to that, the sorts of services that are being facilitated through Rental Dispute Resolution Victoria.

David Limbrick interjected.

Harriet SHING: I am going to pick you up on that interjection there, Mr Limbrick, because you did just talk about people eating their pets. You referred to that on, I think, four or five different occasions in your speech this evening. I know that you are a rabbit owner, so cacciatore notwithstanding –

David Limbrick interjected.

Harriet SHING: You have just said you do not eat rabbits. One of the things that our Residential Tenancies Act reforms do is actually enable people to have a pet, whether it is a rabbit or whether it is a dog or a cat or any other form of domestic animal, within the bylaws that apply. And I know that it has been a really long sitting week, but these are the things that make a meaningful difference for people who want to call a rental property home. This is where the portable bond scheme comes in, and it is a really, really important part of the work that we are doing to make sure that we are helping with cost-of-living measures as part of the housing statement but also as part of making sure that we have got incentives for people to be good tenants, to be good landlords and to be able to have stability of homes that are fit for purpose, that are modern and that meet the terms of the contract as part of minimum standards.

Mr Limbrick, you have been here as well for the debates that we have had on everything from no-fault evictions through to the way in which the Rental Dispute Resolution Victoria framework operates. These are all, as a landscape, intended to make sure that we are doing better by people who are not in home ownership. Speaking of which, you referred in your contribution, Mr Limbrick, to diminishing numbers of rental properties around the state. The Residential Tenancies Bond Authority’s latest figures do show that those figures are actually increasing, so that is actually really important. Rental yields have never been higher. You look at the Real Estate Institute of Victoria’s figures and statistics – that means a return for investors. But in addition to that, you look at the most recent assessments by Saul Eslake, who has indicated that the first home owner opportunities in the landscape here in Victoria are actually a good example of what can be done where those policy levers and those settings are put in place to create incentives and opportunities for people to get into home ownership. There is that, plus the homebuyers equity fund – again, here in Victoria we have assisted well over 11,000 people to get into home ownership – and the sorts of things that we have around other incentives, whether they are stamp duty concessions and exemptions for buying off the plan an apartment, a unit or a townhouse or whether they are the opportunities for first home owners grants or other assistance that is being provided to people. Wherever you sit on the housing continuum, we want to make sure – and this is set out very, very clearly in the housing statement – that there are supports and opportunities for everybody, whether it is private rental assistance, whether it is access to this portable bond scheme set up by this legislation or whether it is part of making sure that we have affordable housing built into the space in which we provide housing for people most in need.

When we deliver on the portable bond scheme, it is about making sure that we are providing that cost-of-living support, including for people most vulnerable who otherwise will not be able to afford to do anything other than play catch-up in a market where they can ill afford to pay the rent because of their lessened bargaining position. This is, for example, going to be the case for women, for victim-survivors of family violence, for people in situations of high need. These – I hate the term ‘cohort’ but I am going to use it – cohorts are the specific focus of initiatives just like this. This is a process that has been developed really carefully. Minister Staikos in the other place has been working really hard alongside consumer groups, alongside Consumer Affairs Victoria and a range of other stakeholders to make sure that we do understand that the levers that we are activating are actually working in the ways that are going to confer the best benefit to people or alleviate the sorts of challenges that people have identified.

I do not intend to go through all of the detail of the bill; it has been canvassed really extensively. I think that save for a Greens’ amendment, we do not have anything else to cover off in the course of this particular second-reading debate, but I do want to thank everybody for their contributions. Mr Limbrick, your wit aside, you do have a keen desire to make sure that there is value and that there is consistency and that there is transparency. I think they are three concepts that do inform the way in which you go about your work. What we would say here on the government benches is that these reforms deliver exactly that. You will disagree as to the extent to which they achieve those ends, but having said that, this is an incremental process which continues to deliver for Victorians, whether it is at the bowser, whether it is through a rental agreement or indeed whether it is through ending one arrangement and seeking to get into another tenancy for any number of different circumstances. On that basis, I will leave my remarks there, and may we be blessed by a mercifully pithy committee stage.

Council divided on motion:

 The PRESIDENT (20:08): I have considered the amendments AP58C circulated by Mr Puglielli, and it is my view they are not within the scope of the bill. Therefore an instruction motion pursuant to standing order 14.11 is required.

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (20:09): I move:

That it be an instruction to the committee that they have the power to consider an amendment and new clauses to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 to provide for a limit of rent increases in accordance with the wage price index for Victoria published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Motion agreed to.

Committed.

Clause 1 (20:10)

Aiv PUGLIELLI: I canvassed this at length in the second-reading debate. For the benefit of the house, I move:

1.   Clause 1, page 2, after line 7 insert –

“(vi) to provide for a limit on rent increases in accordance with the wage price index for Victoria published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics; and”.

Harriet SHING: The government will not be supporting the amendment moved by the Greens. International examples have shown us that rent control and caps worsen the housing crisis by discouraging investment in housing. They also reduce the quality of rentals, and they distort the housing market. In San Francisco – we have covered this on a number of occasions in this place – we have seen studies from Stanford University economists that show that over time rent control ultimately took crucial housing stock out of the market and drove rents up across the city, resulting in a drop in rental supply of about 15 per cent. As I said to Mr Limbrick in my commentary earlier, we are seeing rental stock increasing across Victoria. We do need to make sure that that continues as a trend.

AHURI, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, recently released a report finding that rent freezes are likely to negatively impact the supply of rental housing, and the rental affordability index released by SGS Economics & Planning in November last year confirms that since 2021 rental affordability has steadily declined across all Australia, including Victoria. However, we are seeing that affordability is less of a challenge here in Victoria than it is in other states and that it is less of a challenge in Melbourne than it is in other major cities. That is not to say that it is not a challenge, but it is a less acute challenge because of a range of factors that I covered off in my summing-up. The main driver of high rents is a lack of supply of rentals, as has been pointed out. That is where there are a broad range of initiatives being implemented to tackle the issue through the landmark housing statement. As you would know, we continue to build more homes than other states, including Queensland and New South Wales in particular.

We do want to continue to protect renters. We do want to make sure that we do go on with that work. In March this year the renter protection reforms announced as part of the housing statement were passed in Parliament. These will provide cost-of-living relief to renters and better housing certainty. There are a couple of examples I spoke to in my summing-up: banning all forms of rental bidding; only allowing evictions for a genuine reason, so getting rid of no-fault eviction – we covered this; you and I, Mr Puglielli, had a number of exchanges on this over the course of the committee stage on that bill – such as where a renter has caused serious damage to the property or has failed to pay rent; extending the notice of rent increase and notice to vacate periods from 60 to 90 days; making rental applications easier and protecting renters’ personal information; and also introducing tougher penalties for real estate agents and sellers who break the law. There are a range of initiatives already in place – 150 amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act 1997.

On that basis, and for the reasons that we have indicated around our ongoing commitment to assist people in the rental market and with housing affordability and availability more generally, we will not be supporting the amendment that has been moved.

David LIMBRICK: I am delighted to hear the minister’s response. It is interesting that at the limits of socialist policy is where Labor and I agree apparently. The government rightfully acknowledges that price caps create shortages and that what the Greens are proposing here will in fact create homelessness. The government has in a way acknowledged that it will create shortages, and I am delighted to hear that the government will not be supporting this – long may it stay that way.

Renee HEATH: The coalition also will not be supporting this. To quote Mr Limbrick, ‘at the limits of socialist policy’ is where we also agree today.

Aiv PUGLIELLI: I might just respond. I thank the members for their contributions just now. I will begin by saying that, in Australia, the Labor–Greens coalition that recently was in government in the ACT successfully implemented modest caps on rent increases. Those measures were even accepted by the Real Estate Institute of the ACT, whose president conceded in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2023 that:

Rental caps were fine … because it provides some structure and keeps cowboys out of the market.

Perhaps, Minister, we may be reading different documentation. On my end I have noted international examples in comparable contexts, such as France, Germany and parts of the US, which demonstrate that rent controls can and do coexist with healthy housing markets which work fairly and in line with the public interests, especially when combined with strong tenant protections – like some of which we see in this bill – and community housing construction. I note as a third point that just this week we have seen Los Angeles City Council voting on Wednesday to lower the cap on rent increases for rent-stabilised apartments to 4 per cent – amazing for them, if only we could do it here.

This proposal that has been put forward to the chamber just now is to set a maximum allowable rent increase to be no more than the annual wage price index for Victoria, published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the previous financial year. This is a principle that I and my Greens colleagues believe in. You can call it socialist – call it whatever you like – but we think it is fair for people of Victoria. We are bringing a solution to what is a very specific problem that we all know surely exists. Rents are too high; people are being pushed too far by unlimited rent increases. If members of this chamber think that situation can continue as is, then you are welcome to vote against this proposal for limiting unlimited rent increases.

Harriet SHING: Just a couple of things: there are not unlimited rent increases here in Victoria. They are capped at once per annum. In addition to that, we have a range of initiatives that are intended to assist people with the proportion of their income that they pay on rent. That is defined within the Planning and Environment Act 1987, with affordable housing for low-, very low and moderate-income households, whether they are singles or families in metropolitan Melbourne or in Victoria. We also have a range of other initiatives that are intended to provide support to people.

Just on the international examples that you have cited – again, you did refer to Germany and France – there are so many distinctions and differences in the property markets that exist there, including as they relate to the extension of a tenancy beyond the point of sale, which occurs in Germany, for example; the duration of leases; and long-held systems of occupancy that are universes away from the systems that we have here in Victoria. The closest comparable system that we do have, which is why I referred to it, is the US in terms of the studies that I have referred to there from Stanford. Again, there are always going to be examples as to why it is that we can and should do things differently. We have done things in a way that does recognise the importance of consistency, of stability and of fairness for the purpose of that interaction between renters and landlords. The things that we are doing are working, because we have more homes being built, we have more people being able to access rental properties, we have more people being able to get into the home buyers market and therefore more choice for people whether they want to rent, whether they want to own or whether they want to work towards one or the other over the course of their lives.

Council divided on amendment:

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Minister for Housing and Building, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (20:26): I move:

That the report be now adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

 Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Minister for Housing and Building, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (20:26): I move:

That the bill be now read a third time.

Motion agreed.

Read third time.

The PRESIDENT: Pursuant to standing order 14.28, the bill will be returned to the Assembly with a message informing them that the Council have agreed to the bill without amendment.