Wednesday, 1 April 2026

 Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:21): I move:

That this house –

(1)   notes –

(a) that according to the Homes Victoria Rental Report: September Quarter 2025, average annual median rents for a one-bedroom flat have risen 17.5 per cent in Flemington–Kensington, 21.6 per cent in Burwood–Ashburton, 23.6 per cent in Brighton, 14.6 per cent in Yarraville–Seddon, 17.6 per cent in Sebastopol–Delacombe, 29.6 per cent in North Bendigo, 32.6 per cent in Benalla, and 32.7 per cent in Portland;

(b) the report also indicates that only 9.7 per cent of rental dwellings in metropolitan Melbourne are classified as ‘affordable’, including 1.1 per cent of rental dwellings in Melbourne, 0.9 per cent rental dwellings in Boroondara, and 0.0 per cent of rental dwellings in Bayside;

(c) that research from Cotality, using ABS data, found that rents in Victoria have increased at almost double the rate of wages in over the five years to September 2025;

(d) that in comparison, Cotality’s research shows the ACT was the only Australian jurisdiction where wage growth kept up with rents over the five years to September 2025;

(e) that the ACT is the only Australian jurisdiction that caps rent increases; and

(2)   in accordance with standing order 10.01, requires the Leader of the Government to table in the Council, within three weeks of the house agreeing to this resolution, all briefings and correspondence provided to the Minister for Consumer Affairs regarding policy options to impose rental controls to cap rent increases.

Every day in this state, tens of thousands of people – an increasing number – are forced into impossible choices between paying rent, buying food or facing homelessness. Shamefully, Victoria’s proportion of public and social housing is just 3 per cent. It is the lowest in the country, meaning more than 66,000 households are now on the social housing waitlist, up 7.4 per cent in just a year. It is not just the thousands of Victorians who cannot get into public and social housing that are forced to rely on the private rental market – and this is because successive Labor and Liberal governments built a housing system designed to maximise investor profits and keep pushing up house prices – but even Victorians on above-average incomes are now being locked out of home ownership and are renting over the long term. If you listen to the growing number of renters, they will tell you that they are essentially powerless against profit-seeking landlords who can raise rents by an unlimited amount every year, regardless of a renter’s income or their ability to pay.

Each generation in this state consecutively have found themselves increasingly shut out of the dream of owning their own home. More and more young Victorians today are finding that they are also unable to afford the rental market. Research from Cotality using ABS data found that rents in Victoria have increased at almost double the rate of wages over the five years to September 2025, with rental growth increasing 33.6 per cent compared to wages growth of 16.9 per cent. In real terms this means a person earning the median wage living in a median-priced rental property in Victoria today is around $133 worse off a month than what they were just five years ago. Whereas they were paying around 39 per cent of their after-tax income on rent, they are now paying around 50 per cent, and these are just the luckiest Victorians who are earning the median wage. According to Anglicare’s Rental Affordability Snapshot report, in 2025 there were no properties that met the affordability criteria for singles on JobSeeker and there was just one property in total in the entire state of Victoria – with a population of over 7 million people – which was affordable for a single parent on Centrelink with a child over 14. I repeat: there are no affordable rental properties in Victoria for a single person on JobSeeker and there is just one property in the state classified as affordable for a single parent on Centrelink. I say shame.

The housing crisis is of course a national problem, but there is one jurisdiction that has bucked the trend: the ACT, where the Greens in shared government introduced rent controls. It is the one and only state or territory in Australia where rents have stayed in closer correlation with wage increases in the last five years. Everywhere else renters are falling further and further behind. Yet we continually hear a different story from property industry lobbyists that this should not be the case. They have repeatedly lobbied the government, opposing rent controls and saying they will dry up housing supply and therefore rentals. But the reality is that the ACT with its rent controls is not only leading the nation on rents but also leading the nation in new builds and in housing supply, having delivered 92 per cent of its target under the National Housing Accord. So maybe, just maybe, it might be that the for-profit property industry and real estate agents working off commissions are actually opposing rent controls because the policy will lower rents, as it has in the ACT, and it will therefore also lower their own incomes and profits. That is just a guess. But what this documents motion here today from the Greens is about is seeing whether or not the state government is actually taking advice about rent control policies like those that have been employed in the only jurisdiction in the country where rents have kept in line with wage growth. Of course there are others out there, like property developers and agents, who measure success in the property market in terms of higher profits and commissions, but I truly hope that our state government is listening to those actually making rents more affordable rather than those seeking to make them more expensive. I commend the motion to the house.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:25): I rise to speak to motion 1378 today, which has been brought in by Mr Puglielli. There is one point on which I do fundamentally agree with Mr Puglielli, and that is that the housing system is not working for younger people. It is not working for too many Victorians. I do certainly agree with him there. I would then point to the fact that that is exactly why this Labor government has enacted so many changes. It is why, for example, we have brought in the strongest protections for renters in the country, on a number of occasions, strengthening those rental protections for Victorians. We have also built more homes and are building more homes than anywhere else in the nation. This is where I think it gets to the real point of it. We are genuinely at risk now of a generational crisis, where a whole generation or multiple generations of Victorians are at risk of being locked out of, as Mr Puglielli said, the chance to buy a new home – or any home for that matter – or the chance to rent and be independent. Indeed, though it is not strictly related, I did make similar remarks in my contribution this morning when I was talking about Baylin, a young retail worker who was 18, living and renting and unable to pay rent because he was being unfairly held back by the wage system. That has now been changed, which is a very good thing.

But I would draw the house’s attention to the fact of the actions that this government are taking. There is much, much more work to do, and I am the first to say it. We have constant arguments with the other far corner of the chamber over there, who bring in motion after motion and petition after petition to block new housing – including in fact in particular in Brighton, which is one of the suburbs mentioned in Mr Puglielli’s motion. We know the Liberal Party’s view on this and what they would seek to do: wind back these reforms that are building these new houses. What we do see is that the reforms that we have put in place are starting to work. For example, we know that the recent Cotality data shows that rents in Melbourne in 2025 rose by 2.5 per cent, which is around half of the national average of 5.1 per cent; indeed in some cases, such as Darwin, it was as high as 7.6 per cent. This was below inflation and the wage price index increase of 3.4 per cent that we saw to the December quarter of last year. We know that whilst nationally rental affordability has deteriorated, Victoria has maintained stable rental affordability levels consistent with those levels of a decade ago. We also know that there is more work to be done, and that includes providing the supply of new houses, such as what we have already demonstrated: in the past year to September 2025 building 10,000 more homes than New South Wales and 20,000 more homes than Queensland. In the state of Victoria in that year more than 54,000 homes were built, despite the continued strain on the nationwide housing construction sector.

We know that the time to save for a first home buyer to get to a 20 per cent deposit in Victoria is five years and three months for an average entry-level house. This compares to seven years and seven months in Sydney, six years and three months in Brisbane and indeed five years and seven months even in Adelaide. We are also leading the nation with build to rent. We have the largest share of first home buyers in Victoria; 22 per cent of home purchases nationwide are by first home buyers, but in Victoria that figure is 27 per cent. There is a lot that we have done and there is a lot more that we will do, but to say that Victoria is uniquely bad in this situation is quite simply not accurate. There is a powerhouse of work that has been done to change our planning laws and to provide those housing opportunities for young Victorians, whether they want to live in great electorates like mine on the outer fringes of Melbourne, whether they want to live in regional Victoria or whether they even want to live, yes, in the inner or middle suburbs.

Even when Mr Davis and his friends in the Liberal Party hold up their placards and say, ‘Not in my backyard,’ this is a government that recognises that we cannot just let the status quo continue. We cannot let that continue, and that is why we are standing up for renters and protecting their rights in their agreements. We saw just this week reforms to the way in which they do rental applications, to make processes easier. It is also why we are saying we will support density in a sensible fashion and development in council areas like Boroondara, where we are seeing public school enrolments dropping due to a population decline. That is exactly where we need to be investing in housing for Victorians, exactly in the places mentioned in the motion, and this Labor government is continuing to do that job.

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (10:30): I am pleased to rise and support the motion moved by Mr Puglielli today, motion 1378. This notes the Homes Victoria rental report for the September quarter 2025 and lists a series of annual median rent rises for one-bedroom flats. The report also indicates only 9.7 per cent of rental dwellings in metropolitan Melbourne are classed as ‘affordable’ on those definitions.

The motion notes the research of Cotality, using ABS data, that found rents in Victoria have increased at almost double the rate of wages over the past five years. It notes that in comparison Cotality’s research shows the ACT was the only jurisdiction where wage growth kept up with rents. I am going to make one point here, Mr Puglielli: this is the public service town in Canberra. We are all paying for them. That is why their payments have gone up much more than elsewhere. I also make the point that one of the reasons that wages have not kept up with rents is because in Victoria wages have not been growing properly. In fact effective household income has been falling in Victoria – income per head in Victoria over recent years has been falling.

Ryan Batchelor interjected.

David DAVIS: I can. It has not done very well over the last few years, I can tell you, in Victoria.

Ryan Batchelor interjected.

David DAVIS: No, I have not actually read all of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee report tabled yesterday, that is true. I naturally went to the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action section straight off. I have read most of that, but I will get through the report in due course. What I will say is that income per head over recent years, in aggregate, has not done well in Victoria at all. That is one of the reasons that Victorians are struggling. Income per household has not done well in Victoria over recent years. Victorians have not kept pace. In fact one of the reasons that we are facing challenges with rental properties is because the state government has jacked up taxes on rental properties and all properties that are individual-owned homes that are rented and industrial properties have been clobbered by the state government with its raft of new taxes, new charges and the fees that are jacked up, which people are feeling very directly. My point to Mr Puglielli is I do not think the ACT is a great jurisdiction to quote because it is an unusual jurisdiction. It is a jurisdiction where we are being taxed to smithereens to pay for public servants in Canberra. It is an unusual town, and I want to just put that on the record.

In terms of the documents order under standing order 10.01, we will support that – all the briefings and correspondence provided to the Minister for Consumer Affairs regarding policy options to impose rental controls to cap rent increases. I do want to put on record that we are very aware of the economic literature that does not support rent caps, that does not support rent controls of various types. There is a long history of economic literature that shows it is counterproductive. What you tend to see is that the maintenance of those buildings deteriorates, the quality of the buildings deteriorates, and a whole range of other unintended effects do occur. The economic literature is very clear that rent controls are not the way to deal with it.

Notwithstanding that, I think Mr Puglielli has got every right to ask for this information. The government has either considered it or it has not. If it has considered it, well, let us see it. Let us see what they had in their consideration of this matter. If they have not considered it, I suspect that is an answer Mr Puglielli will also want to understand. So they are both fair outcomes from my perspective and from the Liberals and Nationals’ perspective. But in terms of some of the points made over there by Mr Galea, and I am picking up directly from his contribution, I am very aware of the process that the government has underway now to designate high-rise, high-density zones. They are not activity centres. They are high-rise, high-density zones, and they are going to cause enormous trouble in our municipalities. (Time expired)

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:36): The Libertarians will also be supporting this motion. I am very interested to see this advice, although I doubt we will get it. We will get another letter saying it is taking too long, but if there was going to be advice, I imagine it would say something along the lines of ‘Why don’t you go and read a book on economics?’, because everyone knows the iron law of price caps equals shortages. We must judge policies by their consequences, not by their intention. And whilst the Greens try and tell us that price caps do not equal shortages, they might try and tell us that the laws of gravity do not exist either.

Back in the real world, people have tried rent controls and they are a disaster. You can point to Spain; it is a great example of what happened with rent controls. In Barcelona the rental supply has collapsed by 43 per cent since 2021. In Navarre, in their rental regulation zones, they have halved in two quarters combined. In A Coruña they lost 51 per cent of their rental agreements within five months of imposing price caps, a total disaster. In Barcelona in 2024 their rental contracts were down 14.9 per cent from the previous year, and Navarre saw contracts drop in all its regulated municipalities. Also, the prices of unregulated contracts went up in those areas. In San Francisco, another area, expanded rent controls cut supply by 15 per cent and pushed unregulated rents up by 7 per cent. In Berlin, their rent controls, which were later struck down as unconstitutional, saw regulated listings fall 52 per cent.

There is also a contrasting situation. Argentina also had rent controls with similarly disastrous outcomes. President Milei recently removed all their rent controls, in December 2023. What happened to rents? Supply jumped by 212 per cent within six months, and there was a 26.6 per cent fall in rents in inflation-adjusted terms. So he took a chainsaw to the rent controls, and what happened? Prices dropped and availability increased. It shows that the laws of economics are like the laws of gravity. For a party that lectures us so much about science and this sort of thing, when they believe in this superstition about rent controls, you must discount everything that they have to say about everything else, because clearly the policy that they are pushing for will cause homelessness and cause rents to become unavailable. It is an irresponsible policy.

I commend the government for resisting this, and I note that the Treasurer and others in the Labor Party have actually come out and said that rent controls are a bad idea. I also commend the opposition for opposing rent controls. These are a terrible idea. Victoria must never do it. It will end in disaster. In fact, what we must be doing is deregulating our rental sector, and we only need to look at what happened in Argentina to see the benefits that could be caused by that.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:39): I do not have much time, because of the construction of the sessional orders that was agreed to to limit debate on short-form documents motions, but there are simple points I think we need to make in this debate. The data shows that Melbourne has some of the lowest growth in rent prices in the country, and that is undoubtedly due to the efforts to increase the supply of properties available to rent. We are leading the nation in approving homes for construction, in commencing homes for construction and in completing the construction of new homes. That is what this Labor government is doing – bringing more homes into the housing market so that more people can buy them or rent them. The second thing that we have done in this state to improve the rental situation is we have had a raft of rental reforms, and I do not have time to go through them all. We have increased minimum standards. We have limited rent increases to once per year, and new laws that came into effect yesterday give the director of Consumer Affairs Victoria and Rental Dispute Resolution Victoria more powers with respect to excessive rent increases. This Labor government is standing up for renters and delivering.

Motion agreed to.