Wednesday, 3 December 2025

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (17:39): I rise to speak on another Victorian Ombudsman report, the investigative report into the management of domestic building insurance claims by the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority, aptly titled We Just Want to Finish Our Home. Colleagues who were in the chamber at the time might remember this referral was actually moved by me in this place and supported by most colleagues. It really goes into the treatment of young families in their time of crisis. They described what happened to them as ‘a double catastrophe’. First they were dealt a huge blow, losing their deposits, sometimes their life savings, due to the collapse of building companies largely due to the inflationary effect of the mismanaged Big Build. Then they were dealt another blow with the VMIA basically torturing them into submission, not able to get what they were entitled to, which was their insurance that they had signed up to.

We saw on display the treatment of young families in this by the VMIA themselves. If I could quote some of the comments from Labor’s VMIA staff, one domestic building insurance team member said:

I hate them all

Another DBI member said:

im on fire today, called a C**t owner at 8.15 this morning, put her in her place

Another said:

just called an owner and woke them, score

stupid effen query

That is the kind of contempt with which staff members in the public service have treated young families at their time of crisis. It is all well and good for Danny Pearson to apologise, but what I want to know is: are those people still working in the Victorian public service? Victorians and young families have a right to know that. It is all well and good for the minister to apologise today after seeing those comments. Obviously now we know why the same minister was stomping up and down the crossbench hallway trying to get support to defeat my motion to support these young families. Now we know what these young families were up against. They were up against a brick wall of an incompetent, under-resourced VMIA, which was not equipped to deal with the crisis that came, even though we know from the minister’s briefs, which we obtained, that he was warned about the crisis in the domestic building industry.

We of course saw the use of top-tier law firms to manage away the young families in this crisis when the VMIA knew that those young families were entitled to their deposits back. They received advice from top-tier law firms that they could actually refuse those claims and maybe only pay them out if they challenged their claims. We know that young families – and I have spoken to them – were told by way of letters that they would have to go to VCAT if they wanted to challenge the refusal and that if they lost they would have to pay the VMIA’s legal costs, even though we know that that advice was actually wrong.

At the time I put in a freedom-of-information request requesting the amount of money the VMIA was spending on top-tier legal firms to push away young families. After a year and a half of refusal the information commissioner came back and said, ‘These documents should be released; there is no reason to refuse them.’ What happens next? The VMIA has taken me to court to refuse those documents, to try to withhold those documents. The Victorian public ought to know and those young families ought to know what the government is hiding and how much it is costing young families – people like Suzi Ralph, who is with us today, a Porter Davis customer, and Alex from Craigieburn, who was paying rent in Glenroy while paying for a concrete slab in Craigieburn. There are countless stories from young families who were let down by this tired, old Labor government, and it is on show in this report that was tabled today.