Thursday, 24 September 2026

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (18:12): (2852) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Housing, Building and Precincts, and the action I seek is a commitment to at least double the number of public homes in Victoria. One of the reasons I became politically active was my sense of outrage at the injustice of our housing system. Working as a GP at a service for people sleeping rough and experiencing poverty, the utter abandonment of so many people by our governments was laid bare. So often I would be treating things like infected blisters on people’s feet because they had to be constantly on the move with disintegrating footwear, figuring out how we could find refrigeration access for someone 24/7 so they could store the insulin on which their life depended, begging emergency accommodation for a night so someone with pneumonia did not have to sleep in the cold or organising counselling for people to help with their mental ill health before sending them back onto the street to be retraumatised.

Some of the most difficult situations were experienced by women. Every single one had a story marked by violence – violence that forced them out of their homes, forced them to live in fear and forced them to erase their identities, and violence that caused unspeakable injuries, pregnancy losses and deaths. For every woman I saw in that clinic, I knew that countless were couch-surfing or sleeping in their cars or tents, often with children, or on the brink of losing the roof over their heads. On any given night in Victoria over 30,000 people are unhoused. In 2024–25, 105,125 people across Victoria sought housing support from the specialist homelessness sector. Fifty-nine per cent were women – it is the fastest growing demographic experiencing homelessness – and 36 per cent were children and young people under 25. Family and domestic violence is the driver in at least 44 per cent of cases.

The median age of death for people experiencing homelessness is 55 years old, almost 30 years less than the national average. Housing instability for children leads to lifelong disadvantage that is perpetuated through generations. This is just so profoundly unjust, especially in a country as rich as ours. Evidence shows that countries that have more public housing also have lower rates of homelessness. Yet Victoria has the lowest proportion of public housing of any state or territory, with social and public housing sitting at roughly 2.88 per cent of all households, against an average of over 4 per cent, and that has been falling for decades. Labor has spent $2.5 billion demolishing public housing and outsourcing its responsibilities to the community housing sector and the market. Labor has walked away from public housing, yet building more is one of the most powerful things we could do to address the housing crisis and homelessness. We can and must do better.