Tuesday, 13 August 2024

Housing

Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (13:49): Labor went to two elections promising social and public housing at the Fitzroy Gasworks, bragging an unprecedented amount, and they have announced and funded multiple times over social housing projects across the state. First it was the Big Housing Build, then it was the Housing Australia Future Fund, then it was the Commonwealth Games funding and now it is the housing statement. They keep bragging and banging on and on about how they are building social housing, yet behind the scenes they are quietly cancelling it all.

Last week the Premier blamed the Greens for holding up housing at the gasworks, knowing that she herself had signed off on killing it. Secret, leaked cabinet documents from May last year show that Labor secretly ditched the public and social housing, and now they are about to sign the contract selling off hectares of Fitzroy land to greedy developers in the middle of a housing crisis.

Well, I am here to say as the representative for Fitzroy: do not do it. Do not sign the contracts. You do not have a mandate to sell off this public land to private developers. This community have fought governments and they have won. We have saved the Fitzroy pool. We have stopped the east–west toll road. If you sign the contracts, people will show up to stop it, and this will be Labor’s legacy. The Allan Labor government will go down in history as the government that stripped homes from the poor to make developers rich.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind members that ‘you’ refers to the Chair.