Wednesday, 5 March 2025

Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Danny Pearson:

That this bill be now read a second time.

James NEWBURY (Brighton) (10:44): I rise to speak on the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025. If you look at the bill on its own, just the wording of the bill, it is a very simple bill in that it is a referral bill. It refers powers to the Commonwealth to enable the Help to Buy scheme, but as we know with this Labor government, you need to look closely at what they are doing to understand the sneakiness in everything that they do. This bill is no different, because when it comes to the policy there are issues with this bill, and of course when it comes to this government it is all about politics, which is where I will start.

This bill enables the Commonwealth Help to Buy scheme, and it enables the referral of the Victorian powers to the Commonwealth so that it can happen. But what we do know is that other states have not bought in yet. Other states have not bought into the scheme. Queensland, the only state that has yet done so, did so under the former Labor government, and of course they no longer exist. Only one state has bought in, and yet we are rushing this bill through the chamber at a time when the two major political parties federally have different positions on this policy. What I expect will happen is that this bill will be debated in the Council in the middle of the federal caretaker period. The current federal government and Parliament will be prorogued shortly, I expect, and this Parliament will be debating a bill and enabling a policy that by the time it gets through this Parliament, if the federal Labor Party is not successful at the election, may no longer move ahead. Our party, by the time it gets to moving through the Parliament, effectively may have to rescind what we are debating. All it would have taken from this government was for them to say, ‘Let’s hold this bill off for one or two sitting weeks, because we don’t know the outcome of the federal election, so that there is certainty around this program.’ That is why I move:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘, noting the contrasting position of the two major federal political parties on this policy, this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the outcome of the federal election is determined.’

I would appreciate it if that was circulated. It seems only common sense for a state Parliament to know what the federal government is going to do with a policy before enabling it. We can be almost certain that this Parliament, especially in the upper house, will be debating a bill when the Parliament is prorogued. The federal government will effectively no longer exist as anything other than a caretaker government, and yet this Parliament will be pushing a policy forward at a time when we cannot be certain of the outcome of the federal election or assume that this policy will continue.

It is important to start there and to understand that this, like everything else this government does, was never about substance; it was always about politics. There is no doubt in my mind that the reason why this bill is being pushed here before the other states and before the outcome of the federal election is purely so this Premier and the federal Labor Party can try and play politics with these issues in Victoria, because that is what they do. It is never about outcomes; it is always about the politics. That is what will happen with this bill: this government will play politics with this bill in the middle of a caretaker period. They have been caught, and they are upset they have been caught. I understand they are upset that their dastardly scheme has been caught.

But when it comes to the substance of the bill it is important to put on the record some of the details of the scheme, both in comparison to the existing Victorian fund and what the Victorian government is proposing to scrap on their fund and replace with this federal scheme. For background, the current Victorian fund has a scheme size that provides 18,000 homes, over its almost four years of operation, at an asset funding cost of about $700 million a year. That is being scrapped as we move to the government scheme.

What I think most people would not be aware of is under the new scheme Victorians are getting a heck of a lot less, and we have not read in the minister’s second-reading speech any acknowledgement of the new scheme effectively being a cost-cutting exercise for Victorians, have we? We have not heard the government crowing about the massive reduction in the fund by comparison to what is currently being provided to Victorians, but that is what is going to happen.

The federal scheme will be providing 10,000 homes over four years. For those who are following, by comparison to the 18,000 under the existing scheme it is down to 10,000, and an annual funding change drops from $700 million to just under $350 million. So it is a halving of the annual asset allocation to this scheme, and that does not take into account recent Parliamentary Budget Office findings that 668,000 Victorians, or 29 per cent of those currently on the Victorian Homebuyer Fund, would no longer qualify under the federal scheme. So we see a federal scheme that is massively cut – I mean, it is halving what currently is in place – and then, on top of that halving, a third who are currently eligible would no longer be eligible. If you are following, it is a scheme that is halved, and then a third are knocked out from the half that remain.

Only Labor at this state level could manage to cost-cut on a scheme that they are crowing about having created. I mean, the government yesterday came into this chamber and crowed about the scheme and how they paved the way for Australia. Well, they have paved the way for Australia to create a scheme that halves what they are providing and cuts a third of eligible people out from what is available to them in the remainder. I mean, only Labor could possibly manage to help design a scheme – and presumably when the ministers are crowing about the federal scheme, what they mean is they helped design the federal scheme. That is the only thing we can possibly take from their crowing – that they helped design this scheme that cuts deeply into the program that they constantly crow about.

When it comes to the politics of this bill, we know that the Labor Party is simply going to use this bill to play games through the federal election – there is no doubt about that – and when it comes to the substance of the bill there are serious concerns and questions that remain outstanding, which is why we have moved a reasoned amendment that the outcome of the federal election become clear before the bill proceeds. But if the amendment were to fail, we would not oppose the bill, because of course Victorians should receive a share of what effectively we are all paying for. I mean, Australians will all be paying for this scheme.

Therefore as Victorian members of Parliament and part of the Victorian coalition we of course would expect that our state receives a share of what we are effectively funding as taxpayers. So when it comes to the final bill we will not be opposing it, but there are – I mentioned the design of the policy around the scheme – a number of other issues that are worth mentioning. It is worth noting that the scheme parameters are not even finalised. The federal government scheme is not yet finalised, so this Parliament is considering something when we do not know what the final scheme will look like.

There are some draft parameters around the scheme, and they include at a Victorian level a price cap on Victorian property at $850,000 or in areas other than capital city and regional centres $650,000, a single income threshold of $90,000 and a joint income threshold of $120, 000. They are the draft, not final, parameters. When you look at the prices you can understand I think how those parameters have led the Parliamentary Budget Office to conclude that a vast proportion of people who would be eligible for the current Victorian fund will not be eligible for the Commonwealth scheme, because the parameters are tighter, whether it is the federal Labor government that has tightened the scheme or the Victorian government, which I understand was consulted in the parameter design process and has helped them bring in the scheme. Those parameters are only in draft form. Not only do they squeeze eligibility, but they are only in draft form. Effectively this Victorian Parliament is being asked to give up a power to run a scheme to a party when we do not know who will be in government after the next federal election, on a scheme that is based on a framework which has not been finalised yet. I mean, that is pretty galling, isn’t it? You would think that any Victorian Parliament would say, ‘Well, why don’t we wait a couple of weeks until we know the outcome of the federal election? Why wouldn’t we wait until the federal government actually finalise the design of their own program?’ Well, the only possible answer is: because this Labor government wants to play politics.

We hear the government again pushing on the bill, but I have not heard this government push the other Labor state governments. I have not heard a single one of the ministers push the other state Labor governments into this scheme. I offer the minister an opportunity – or any minister – to show us where he has pushed his other state Labor colleagues into this scheme. If this government wants this scheme to work, why doesn’t Labor HQ ring up Labor HQ in the state next door and push them into it? Because it is all about politics. It is always about politics.

The other point that is worth noting with this bill is that there has been no consultation. There has been no consultation with the industry who actually build homes, so I asked the government how they consulted on this bill, which is a fair and reasonable question. If you are going to bring about powers, it is the first question you ask, especially when it comes to delivering homes – you would think the Labor Party would have consulted with someone who builds a home. And the answer I got from the department – I kid you not – was ‘Yes, we’ve consulted other departments.’ The government has not worked out that there is a world outside big government and the world outside big government is the world that actually builds the houses. So we have a bill that seemingly enables people to get into homes, but no consultation by this government has occurred outside of talking to itself.

I mean, you could turn that into an ABC comedy. The answer to the consultation question is: ‘We’ve talked to other departments; we’ve talked to each other.’ That gives me very little hope, and it just goes to show why when the minister talked in his second-reading speech – a very short second-reading speech, I might say – about the government’s ‘vision’, I think as one minister described it yesterday, to build 800,000 new homes at 80,000 homes a year, that vision has failed. The minister in his second-reading speech talked about this being part of the government’s strategy to deliver 800,000 homes, and we all know how quiet the government have been on their plan – or their vision now. I call it their promise, but the minister yesterday said ‘vision’. A vision to build 800,000 homes – I mean, vision almost sounds like a mirage, doesn’t it? They are using language that paints the promise as being in the absolute distance, and I think every Victorian now knows that that 800,000 promise, Dan’s promise, has gone with Dan. We know it was Dan’s promise and Dan is gone, and so is that promise.

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY: The members on the other side of the chamber ask, ‘Who’s Dan?’ It is not lost on us that we never hear that side of the chamber talk about Dan, but I think in not too long you are going to be asking, ‘Who’s Jacinta?’

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Through the Chair, member for Brighton. I remind the member to use correct titles.

James NEWBURY: I digress, Deputy Speaker. But as I said, the minister talked in the second-reading speech about this policy being a part of the government’s plan to build 800,000 homes – 80,000 homes each year over the next 10 years – and I make the point that that figure, that promise, that commitment has not eventuated because what this government does with all policy is it makes an announcement after talking to itself. Department talks to department. One department creates an idea for a new tax, which is usually the genesis, I suspect, for most policies: ‘How do we create a new tax and dress it up as something else?’ And so that policy of 800,000 new homes, which was a series of new taxes, has not delivered new homes. In fact only Labor could have announced a commitment to building new homes and had the number of homes go backwards. It is perhaps one of the most astonishing failures of a Victorian state government in the history of this place that they announced a statewide plan to build 800,000 homes, as the minister spoke to in the second-reading speech of this bill, and yet the number of homes has gone backwards. This is partly because when the policies that the government announced were designed, I suspect they talked to themselves. In fact I am told the department’s plan was to commit to 600,000 homes at 60,000 a year, and the former Premier said the number was not big enough as his final announcement – ‘Up it to 80,000’ – because he wanted a big announceable as his going-out message.

So it is no wonder that when it comes to policy, when policies are designed in consultation with yourself rather than in consultation with industry when it comes to housing, your policies fail. And when the policies are built around taxes, is it any wonder that you do the opposite to incentivising industry? That is what we are seeing with housing.

That is exactly what we are seeing with housing. We are seeing a nation-leading collapse in investment into our state. You can see it. You can feel it. You cannot talk to a single person in the sector when it comes to foreign investment, when it comes to confidence, when it comes to businesses on the ground and their future confidence and not hear back desperation. At the core of that desperation, in part, is the tax regime of this state – what a disgrace. Of the 60 new or increased taxes and charges over the last 10 years, 30 have been in property. This government has attacked the sector so hard the sector is now on its knees. The government’s plan moving forward is to go harder, and we know that we will shortly hear about the government’s plan for the developer contribution scheme, which builds into the 800,000 homes announcement, which will be a new tax. It will be a new tax, and as sure as God made green little apples that tax will cream money off the top from the local communities and go into government coffers, because this government are a bunch of financial vandals. So its answer to everything is a new tax that goes straight into the coffers of the government that is wasting taxpayers money because it has forgotten the golden rule, and the golden rule is that every dollar it spends was first earned through the blood, sweat and tears of some taxpayer. This government have forgotten that principle, and you can see it every time they talk about government spending. When you hear them talk about new taxes, you can hear they have forgotten the fundamental principle of how that tax came into the government coffer. Someone else earned it first, and someone else earned it through their own blood, sweat and tears, usually through running a business, perhaps a family business, a small business, which are the backbone of this state.

When it comes to this policy it is concerning that when asked about consultation on how this policy will operate, the government’s answer was, ‘We’ve talked to other departments.’ Well, frankly, what would they know, because this policy is about getting people into homes, so why not talk to someone who builds a home? Why wouldn’t you? When I asked that question I was told the federal government will not allow states to consult with anybody. The federal government will not allow any state government to consult with anybody. Can you believe it? They are blocking the states, who they have asked for a referral of power, from talking to anybody. Well, why would that be? It is because the states might find out there are problems and flaws with the scheme or there are eligibility issues with the scheme. It is extraordinary to think that the federal government has designed a scheme and blocked the states from talking to anybody about it, so I do not blame the department from only consulting with itself and holding all the team meetings I am sure it did to consult with other public servants. I am sure that was very fruitful work, and it is not their fault, because it turns out the Prime Minister is blocking the states from talking to anyone who builds a home about a program designed to bring people into homes.

Only this Labor Party could possibly bring about a scheme of that nature. That is why it is important to reiterate that the coalition has moved an amendment on the outcome of the federal election, because there are divergent views at a federal level on the future of this policy. Those divergent views are very, very clear. They are very, very clear.

Although the federal Labor Party wants to continue with a scheme – this scheme, a cut-down scheme, a scheme that will dramatically reduce the number of Victorians that are eligible – it is providing this scheme, and the coalition has said otherwise at a federal level. If we were midway through a term, if were in a time when the federal government was underway with a mandate, you would say, ‘Okay, perhaps it’s fair and reasonable that the two parties have different views, but one of them has been elected and one of them is in government.’ But we are at a time when the federal election is most likely days away from being called, potentially at the end of this week. So this Parliament will be debating a bill –

Members interjecting.

James NEWBURY: I am hearing Labor members calling out. It is Labor MPs who have been putting that about. It is federal Labor MPs who this week have been putting that about. I will not name them, but I am happy to if the members want – federal Labor MPs who have been telling everybody, including me, when the federal election will be called. This bill will be debated by this Parliament in the other place at a time when the federal Parliament is prorogued and when the government is in caretaker period, so we will not know the outcome of this bill. When I spoke to the government about that issue – I mean, it is a fair and reasonable question to ask, ‘Why are we passing it? Why are we seeking to pass something that by the time we have passed it, who knows what will happen?’ – I was told not to worry because the bill can effectively be rescinded. There are powers within the bill – and there are – that effectively enable the bill to be rescinded and spent before it is proclaimed. So, hang on, this Parliament will be debating a bill that is designed by operation to hit the floor before it is even proclaimed. Why not wait? Why not just wait a few weeks so that we know the outcome of the federal election. That seems very fair and reasonable, but no, there is no doubt that this government wants to play politics with this policy and the broader housing policy.

It is clear now in my view that Victorians can see that the government is playing politics with housing. There is no doubt that the government are playing politics with housing, and you can see it very broadly in relation to their commitments, promises and visions for the number of homes built, which has actually gone backwards, and with their broader housing announcements which attack Melbourne suburbs. You can see it in certain Melbourne suburbs, not others. You can see that it is all about politics, and that is why the community has lost confidence in this government. You can also see that in terms of industry, and it explains why we are seeing a collapse of confidence in the housing construction sector, because it has also lost confidence in this government. The only way to fix these fundamental problems is to see a change of government. The only way now is to see a change of government, because you can see that on all major issues this government has completely lost touch, misunderstands the issues and is trying to create fake announcements, which are usually designed around new taxes, and Victorians can see it.

On this bill, we will not oppose the final bill if the amendment is not successful. I do hope my debate convinced the government members to support it. I can see that they are so quiet because they feel that it did. But on the final bill, we will not be opposing that.

Paul HAMER (Box Hill) (11:14): I rise to speak on the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025. I will talk on the bill, but I do want to address some of the issues that the member for Brighton raised. At the outset I will say that the government will not be supporting the reasoned amendment. But I did enjoy the member –

James Newbury interjected.

Paul HAMER: I think I am fairly confident in saying that that will be the stance of the government. But I must say that the member did talk about ABC comedy, and I do hope that all of that video footage gets sent to some of the producers at ABC, because I am sure there is a comedy show in there just for him. The member for Brighton has a career waiting after Parliament.

James Newbury interjected.

Paul HAMER: And it was meant to be a compliment. I am amazed at the confidence that both the member for Brighton and the Liberal Party in general have coming up to what will be a heavily contested election and also the state election coming up in 2026. The Liberals already have a Shadow Minister for Transition to Government two years out from an election. They have already decided that they need someone to measure who is going to be in which room in the ministerial offices and who is going to sit in which chair at the cabinet table. At the same time, they are all about stopping and pausing –

John Mullahy: Doing nothing.

Paul HAMER: doing nothing and waiting, as the member for Glen Waverley said. The member for Mornington, when he was talking about this bill in the government business program, specifically mentioned the pause. I was thinking about this – and this goes across a lot of different sectors; they want to pause our housing policy, they want to pause our transport policy and now they want to pause this bill as well – and I thought back to the old VCR days, back when they existed, and what happened when you pressed pause. Eventually it would just cut out, fail and stop and you would get nothing, and you would probably have to restart it all from the beginning. When they say the word ‘pause’, that is all that I think about.

In terms of where we are now with coming up to a federal election, yes, we will have an election in a couple of months time. But as the member would know, the legislation has passed the Commonwealth Parliament, and if the legislation is to be repealed it would also need to go through the new Senate, which will not sit until July. We also do not know the composition of that Senate. We may not know the composition of that Senate for some time, and there is no guarantee that that Senate is going to be amenable to all of the policies of whichever party forms government in the lower house. We have the opportunity to debate and present this bill and put this bill to the Parliament now so that opportunity is ready to be taken in the term of the next government however they wish to pursue it.

Another matter that the member for Brighton raised was about the substance of the Commonwealth legislation, and he was very dismissive of the fact that it will provide less to Victorians than the current very successful Help to Buy program and the home owner scheme that we have running in Victoria at the moment. If he gets what he wishes for, and that is a Liberal–National, Dutton-led government in a few months time, the one guarantee is that Victorians will be worse off and will definitely have less, because no scheme is always going to be worse than some scheme which is actually helping Victorians into the housing market and facilitating that opportunity to own their first home.

We know how difficult it has been for many people to enter the housing market and for many people to just get that foot in the door and how successful the scheme has been in Victoria. I think there are 13,000 grants which have been provided to first home buyers to make that first step into home ownership and another 2500 that have been approved.

Whatever the size of the scheme that is finalised in the federal system, it is more than nothing. If I understand what the member for Brighton is saying, the federal opposition is promising nothing to help these first home buyers get into the system in this way, and I think it is going to be a very stark choice for people coming up to the federal election to decide what a federal Labor government will deliver for them and what potentially a federal Liberal government will deliver for them.

In terms of the actual bill itself, as was briefly referred to by the member for Brighton, it is a fairly short and procedural bill which is required to allow Victoria to provide the Commonwealth with the powers to actually implement the program. Under the constitution Help to Buy cannot operate in a state unless it either refers the relevant state powers or adopts the Commonwealth legislation. This is why the current bill that we are debating today seeks to adopt the Commonwealth’s Help to Buy Act 2024. Under the Commonwealth’s Help to Buy scheme Housing Australia will make financial contributions to the purchase of residential properties in exchange for an equity share in those properties. Yes, there are some details still to be worked out by Housing Australia, but the intention of the scheme is for it to operate in a very similar manner to the homebuyer scheme that is currently operating in Victoria. As I referred to previously, this has been a very successful program in actually getting people into the housing market for the very first time.

We know how much of a challenge it has been with housing affordability. I was at a planning forum last week that was put on by Whitehorse council. They had a very interesting graph about housing prices and how they relate to household income. The point at which they diverged was sometime at the end of last century, around 1999, 2000, and the multiple has changed from about three times household income up to about eight to nine times household income. That is why we are seeing so many challenges in housing affordability. The panellist who was making the reference made the point that this was introduced at the same time as the changes to capital gains tax and the accounting for capital gains and the discount to capital gains tax were made by the Howard government at the time. I have also heard commentary about how the changes that were brought in at the time were intended to make us a nation of shareholders but have, perhaps inadvertently, made a very large group of property investors. There is nothing wrong with being a property investor, but it also means that there is a larger group of people for whom it is much more difficult to get that first step into their own home ‍– into the home that they will occupy and raise a family in.

It is an important bill and it is a timely bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (11:24): I am glad to hear that the previous speaker said there is nothing wrong with being a property investor. I wish he would tell his colleagues to stop the vendetta in this state against property investors, because it is that vendetta against property investors that is actually causing the housing situation here in Victoria. There is an old saying about treating the symptom or the cause. The symptom in Victoria is there is a shortage of housing, and housing is very, very expensive and people have trouble getting into the housing market. No-one argues against that. But what is the cause of it? The cause of it is state government policy, taxes and charges. The Housing Industry Association has said that more than 40 per cent of a house and land package is actually state government taxes and charges. So all the MPs on the other side of the house, when you have constituents that come in to see you and say, ‘We are struggling to get into the housing market,’ why don’t you be honest with them and actually tell them, ‘It is our government, our government’s policies, our government’s taxes and our government’s charges that are actually making up that huge price that you cannot afford for a house.’ More than 40 per cent – I repeat, more than 40 per cent, according to HIA evidence – of the price of a house and land package in Victoria is state government taxes and charges.

If you are actually talking about solving the issue of the price of housing and the shortage of housing, go back and look at the Allan government policies, taxes and charges that actually drive up the price of housing and create the shortage. It is the red tape, the green tape, the black tape, the stopping of property going to market and the stopping of developers actually getting subdivisions done that is driving up that shortage of housing again. Look up Aesop’s fable about the goose that laid the golden egg and actually look at that fable – I encourage those on the other side of the house to actually look that up. Go to Dr Google and have a look at the fable about the guy that had the goose that laid the golden egg, who kept pushing and pushing it to lay more eggs until it could not lay any more eggs. It is the same with property taxes and charges here in Victoria. I actually commend people who invest in property, I say for the previous speaker. I actually commend them for having a go, because they are actually being penalised in this state. I have got people in my electorate – and I am sure it is the same for everyone else in this in this chamber – who are actually selling their investment properties because of state government policies and state government taxes and charges and actually investing interstate because it is more attractive to do so. So go and actually solve the cause of the problem, not the symptom of the problem in this case, which is a shortage of housing because of state government taxes and charges and the huge amount that puts on it.

As has been said, this is a referral of powers to the Commonwealth. A number of speakers have talked about why we should be dealing with this issue when there is a federal election imminent and there is divergent policy from the two major parties in Canberra about what they would actually do with this particular piece of legislation and what they would do in the future to help the issues around housing. As I refer back to the previous speaker again, I live in hope that we actually have a Dutton-Littleproud government after the federal election. I think Australia desperately needs a Dutton-Littleproud government into the future.

If you think about the issues that are impacting on Victorians in this case, we need a reset of the energy policy in this nation to actually stop the huge increase in the cost of energy that is driving businesses out of business because of the cost of energy. From a northern Victoria point of view, we need a major reset of the water policy to stop the buybacks of water, taking water out of productive agriculture to effectively run down the river to put out to the sea in South Australia. We need a major reset of that water policy, and we are actually on a unity ticket with that. I commend the current and previous ministers for water here in Victoria in the Allan and the Andrews governments for actually fighting with us about those buybacks. But we actually have to have a change of federal government, because despite the fact that we might have a Labor government in Victoria and a Labor government federally, the Victorian Labor government are getting no traction with their federal colleagues around this issue of water buybacks. We actually need a change of government in Canberra and hopefully a change of the numbers in the Senate so we can get real reform into the water sector for people in northern Victoria.

As the lead speaker talked about, we have had a number of government policies in Victoria to supposedly solve the housing crisis. We have got the 800,000 new houses that are going to be built over the next decade. The lead speaker talked about a mirage.

One thing that the Labor Party in Victoria is very good at is having a policy position that is grand but is so far in the future that no-one will even know if it will ever happen or not, and particularly those on the other side of the chamber that actually form that policy, sell that policy, articulate that policy; they know they will be well and truly gone before they are ever going to be held to account for that particular policy.

We had this grand policy of 800,000 new houses over the next 10 years – 80,000 per year. They made a mistake in how they sold it. It is 800,000 over the next 10 years, but they actually detailed that that was 80,000 every year for the next 10 years. We have already failed that. You can never catch up what has not been built, because we are never, ever going to have 100,000 or 120,000 a year built to make up for the years when we have not got to the 80,000 houses there.

Again I come back to the issue of the cost of new houses. A policy decision of the Labor Party here in Victoria was to close down the native timber industry. What do you build houses out of? One of the key components of building a house is actually timber –

Members interjecting.

Peter WALSH: Bricks – you have got to actually have a timber frame behind them. Even I know that you have actually got to have a timber frame to hold the roof up and to put the bricks against. You actually have to have timber to build a house. So what is the policy position of the Allan Labor government? ‘Let’s close down the native timber industry here in Victoria. Let’s actually go and import billions of dollars of timber to build houses here in Victoria.’

We actually have forests that are well managed. You cut a tree down, you plant a new tree, that new tree grows and that tree stores carbon. Growing trees are the best carbon sink that we could have in this particular state. But when we talk about housing what does this government do? ‘No, no, we’ll close down the native timber industry. We’ll import timber into this state. We’ll get rid of the jobs right across Victoria but particularly the jobs in regional communities, particularly in Gippsland. We’ll shut that down. We’ll just import the timber.’

It will come from somewhere most likely in Asia where there are not the environmental controls that we have here in Victoria. It will actually come from Indonesia. You will actually have orangutan habitat destroyed so we can build houses in Victoria because the government has a policy that it will close down the Victorian industry that is well managed and that has good environment of controls. Why are they doing that? They could not stand up to the protesters. They could not stand up to the Greens. As I have said previously in this place, the vast majority of MPs that sit on the other side of the house rely on Greens preferences to be elected. The Labor Party says, ‘We can’t upset the Greens.’

Members interjecting.

Peter WALSH: That has got you very, very excited, because you do not want to lose your Greens preferences. It is the Greens preferences that have the majority of you MPs sitting in this house. Even the Premier went to preferences in the last election. There is debate about whose preferences, but mostly it was the Greens preferences that actually got even the Premier of Victoria elected at the last election. You have closed down the native timber industry because you do not want to upset the Greens and you do not want to lose your preferences.

I actually support the reasoned amendment from the member for Brighton that this bill be put on hold until after the federal election – until a Dutton–Littleproud government is formed – and we re-examine it at that time.

Bronwyn HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (11:34): First of all, I am rising to support the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025, and I think the contribution from the member for Murray Plains really epitomises the opposition. I mean, most of that contribution did not even talk about housing. It talked about everything else from conservation to energy prices, which really shows that the opposition is all about supporting those people that already have homes and own homes rather than the future generations that cannot afford to buy a home. But that is not what I am talking about or what the Allan Labor government is all about.

We do care about the future of the coming generations and young people that live in this state, and that is why we have introduced this legislation to support the federal government program that is in fact a reiteration of our program for supporting homebuyers getting into their own home.

Going back to the lead speaker on this, I think there was a bit of sour grapes. Maybe he was upset that he had not thought of the idea as an election policy into the future or to advise the federal Liberal government. But it is good legislation and it is going to help Victorians buy a home. Rather than knock and block these sorts of programs, the opposition should get on board to help our younger Victorians into their own home. We all know that there is a huge problem when younger generations cannot afford to purchase their own home. In the past Australia had a strong history of home ownership, a country that had one of the highest levels of home ownership. But now this is not really the case, as we have seen the amount of home ownership dropping over the years.

This is a federal government program to assist Victorians to buy their own home. It is not legislation to build homes. Again, the lead speaker seemed to get confused between building a home and owning a home. This is legislation that we are talking about to allow Victorians to own their own home. It is not about building their own home; that is different legislation that Allan Labor government is also very focused on to ensure that there are more homes and that there are more affordable homes that people can get into. This legislation is facilitating legislation to allow a federal government scheme to operate in Victoria. Under the constitution and state rights and so on there is not an automatic right for the federal government to come into this space. The state has to then pass legislation to adopt that federal legislation in order to allow Victorians to buy into this program and have access to it.

I just want to give a few facts in terms the trajectory of home ownership and where it is going using the census data from the Thomastown electorate. In the past, when I was first elected, Thomastown electorate had some of the highest levels of home ownership in the state, but this is not the case anymore. When we are looking at the census statistics, 2021 is the most recent. This shows that 30 per cent of homes in the electorate were fully owned, 38.6 per cent were owned with a mortgage and just over 27 per cent were rented. This is quite a significant change from the previous census in 2016, where almost 37 per cent of homes were fully owned, almost 38 per cent owned with a mortgage and 25 per cent rented. This is a trend that the Allan Labor government wants to see in reverse so that there are more people owning their home and more people can afford to purchase a home.

In terms of the federal legislation that we are adopting here, which is building in many ways on the Victorian scheme that we have had for a number of years, this scheme was very successful. It supported more than 13,500 Victorians to become home owners, and there are also another 2300 approved to purchase under this scheme. The idea of this scheme – and I will now start talking about the Commonwealth scheme, which is what we are debating here – is that the Commonwealth government provides some funds to somebody that wants to purchase their own home and they provide an equity contribution. Instead of this catch 22 problem where people cannot afford to save for a deposit because they are paying rent, this allows the Commonwealth in this case to come in and provide the deposit or most of the deposit for the purchase of the house in an equity scheme. Therefore the Commonwealth will then have equity in that property. But it allows the person, people or family to purchase the home, and it could be up to 40 per cent of the purchase price on new homes and up to 30 per cent for existing homes. It also then avoids the home owner having to purchase mortgage insurance, because there is a larger deposit provided for that home.

Of course when the home is sold, that is the point that triggers the payback to the Commonwealth, so in a sense it is a future investment for the government as well. Eligible Victorians will only need a 2 per cent deposit to enter into this scheme, and applicants purchasing in Melbourne and Geelong should be able to purchase properties up to $850,000 in cost and in regional Victoria up to $650,000. This legislation really puts into place the building blocks and the foundation in order for this program to come into being.

In relation to this idea in the reasoned amendment that we wait until the result of the federal election, I think we could pretty well say for certain that that would mean this program would be gotten rid of in the terrible case of the Liberal–National parties being elected federally. It would mean pulling the rug out from under the feet of younger Victorians who want to purchase their house.

While we were sitting here listening to some of the other contributions, I thought I would do a bit of a look through the Liberal Party website on their achievements federally while in government, because they have been in government for the majority of years in most recent times. You have to go back – this is on their own list of achievements – to 1966 to see any comment made on achievements that were to do with housing and building homes. This is the sort of lack of focus that the Liberal–National parties have on what is a human right – having a roof over your head. It is one of the biggest things that people want in their life. It is the biggest purchase. Having an affordable and a stable place to live is so important for all aspects of a person’s life, whether it is their education, their health and wellbeing, their family’s future, all of these things, and you have to go back to 1966 to have any mention from the Liberal–National parties about housing – except of course during the pandemic when we had I think it was the HomeBuilder program, again showing the priorities of the Liberal–National opposition when in government. That was a program where they were giving money to people to make renovations on the houses they already owned. So again, this is where the focus is. The Liberal–National parties only care about those that already have a house, that have already bought or own a house, whereas the Allan Labor government really want to see the younger generations coming up.

I know, for example, my two sons do not own homes. They do not really believe they will ever own a home, and it is really sad to see that there is no longer an aspiration, that people feel that it is a dream that they will never be able to action. But of course under this legislation and this federal government program there will be the opportunity. It will not be a pipedream; it can be a reality that people can start buying a home and getting into a place where they can have a much more stable life, knowing that the house that they are in is their own. They cannot be evicted. They can do with it what they want. They can adapt it to the ways that they need to live and what suits their lifestyle in all sorts of ways.

This legislation is extremely important. It means that the Victorian scheme will be wound down to allow for the federal scheme to come into place, and we look forward to seeing how successful this program will be in getting more people into their own homes.

Sam GROTH (Nepean) (11:44): I rise to give a contribution on the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025. As we have heard, it is a bill that claims to address housing affordability, but I think it actually demands scrutiny, just as the Shadow Treasurer the member for Brighton put forward, as did the member for Murray Plains, across a whole range of issues in housing. I think we can all agree in this place that Victorians are struggling to find secure and affordable homes. This bill aligns state laws with the Commonwealth’s Help to Buy Act 2024, enabling Canberra to make full amendments. I understand that cooperation is necessary if this goes through. As the member for Brighton mentioned, we could be in federal caretaker period as soon as this weekend – two parties completely opposed on the Help to Buy scheme.

We understand that should the current government continue in power in Canberra this scheme will need to be put in place and move forward, but the coalition in Canberra has a completely different plan when it comes to housing. I have heard those on the other side say there is no plan. Well, I do not agree that with that whatsoever, and I am sure my colleagues in Canberra would also say that. We have a very opposing view when it comes to housing – one that says that the government should not own part of people’s homes. They should be staying out of people’s lives, assisting where they can. Also, there is this notion that the government owning part of your home through this Canberra policy put forward by the Albanese Labor government is going to assist in any way, shape or form. The member for Brighton mentioned an article in the Guardian from last year about a Parliamentary Budget Office submission that has actually seen the number of people eligible under this scheme decrease by close to 30 per cent. Almost 700,000 Victorians will become worse off under this scheme should it be handed over to Canberra. We also know that the thresholds for income would be reduced and the price of a house would be reduced.

The member for Murray Plains made an interesting remark and one that seems to get lost on those on the other side of the chamber when it comes to the cost of housing in this state. For a government that has been in power for over 10 years now to talk about a housing crisis – one that has been created under their watch by them whilst they have been in power – there is no understanding from that side to say: you do not make housing cheaper by adding further taxes. The member for Murray Plains was right: 42 per cent of the charges on a new house and land package in this state are taxes, charges and fees that are going right back to those people trying to purchase those homes. If you want to make housing more affordable, instead of handing your powers over to the Commonwealth and saying, ‘You guys take care of it’ – and mind you, we cannot forget that we are nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in debt in this state, and that $2.8 billion burden that comes off the state’s books is maybe not a bad one for this government to relieve themselves of a little bit – just maybe look at the additional 30-plus taxes that you have added when it comes to property in this state. You do not make anything more affordable by adding extra taxes to it.

I will speak locally. People will have assumptions in this place and outside about my electorate, but believe me, most of my electorate is not Sorrento or Portsea, for those that may think differently. I know most people in here would have spent time down in my electorate at some stage. When you look at areas like Rosebud or Dromana that have a growing population where people are looking to get into houses, land tax bills have been hitting my electorate, which is not as densely populated as other areas. We love that because we have got our green wedge between Port Phillip and Western Port, and everyone loves that lifestyle. At the same time, in Rosebud and surrounding areas alone right now there are more than 700 properties on the market on realestate.com.au because people can no longer afford the land tax bills that come with owning those properties. For some of those people, yes, it may be a holiday house, but a lot of them are not the extravagant ones you might see on the cliffs in photos. They are ones that their grandparents may have bought 50 or 60 years ago that have been passed down through the family, or in fact they are properties that people actually rent out.

People seem to forget in this chamber, especially those on the other side, that anyone who is renting is actually doing so from a person who owns the property and has decided to put that house on the long-term rental market. If you keep increasing land tax on the owner, at some point one of two things is going to happen: the rent on that property is going to go up, so it will be more expensive for renters to be able to rent that home, or the owner makes the decision that they do not pass it on and they wear the cost until they can no longer wear it and then put that property on the market. We know that for every three properties on the long-term rental market that go up for sale, only one-third of those come back onto the long-term rental market. So you are actually creating this process whereby you are taxing a diminishing supply of properties on the long-term rental market and those numbers are decreasing and decreasing.

We need to make sure we have policy in this area that is sustainable for the state and is sustainable for keeping the long-term rental market ticking over, but also we have got to be able to create an environment for young families and young Victorians.

I heard the member for Thomastown say that we do not want young people to buy homes. I think that one of the biggest –

A member: What?

Sam GROTH: That is exactly what the member for Thomastown said, that the Liberal Party does not want young people to be able to afford homes. I would argue that one of the core values that we believe in on this side of the house is home ownership – that is personal responsibility, aspiration and the opportunity for someone to get ahead. We do not necessarily believe that the government should be owning a part of your home. We want to do everything we can to create an environment where young people can get into the housing market in a sustainable way and be able to do so without the government having an impact in their everyday lives.

The member for Brighton introduced a reasoned amendment, and I support the Shadow Treasurer in that reasoned amendment that reads:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘, noting the contrasting position of the two major federal political parties on this policy, this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the outcome of the federal election is determined.’

I think we would all probably do well when it comes to federal issues currently passing through this house to maybe just hold stock for 5 minutes. Maybe on a range of policies we should go, ‘Let’s just wait.’ As it currently stands, this bill has been on the floor of the federal Parliament for some time and was originally meant to come into place on 1 January 2023. We are still at a point where the federal Labor government does not actually know how this policy looks right now. We are still waiting on the final model. We are going to go and hand off powers to the Commonwealth in the middle of a federal caretaker period on a scheme that we do not even have the final detail on. I mean, to me – and maybe I am wrong – it would make no sense to hand power over on something that you do not actually know the final detail of.

Members interjecting.

Sam GROTH: I heard members over there saying that I was wrong, and I was listening to the member for Box Hill’s contribution when he said that we on this side of the house do nothing and took up an interjection from the member for Glen Waverley. I can tell you what, in about 20 months time the member for Glen Waverley will be doing nothing in this place, because if this government continues the way they are going, he will be sitting out of a job. He will be out of a job with a bunch of other backbenchers on that side of the chamber. A bunch of them will be out of a job because they are following a Premier right now who is more focused on ideology than the concerns of Victorians. This legislation is an exact example of that. They are handing over powers to the Commonwealth on a scheme that is not finalised.

To the backbenchers on the other side, I would encourage you on this issue, on the issue of crime, on the issue of health and on the issue of education and on all the things that we are reading in the newspapers or that are on the TV and on the radio and that get debated in this chamber regularly, if you are serious about having an impact on Victorians, maybe you just want to worry about keeping your job. Start to do things that are actually affecting the lives of Victorians instead of being just a group of nodding heads at the back of the chamber who read from the notes that are handed to them by the advisers with 2 minutes of a contribution on something local so they can get a grab on Facebook. The reality is in the end, in 20 months time, we are not going to have to worry about them. I am sure the other member at the table is going to be here. We are going to sit here. We will see a change of government. Those members will no longer be in this place, and I tell you what, it will be for the absolute benefit of all Victorians.

Katie HALL (Footscray) (11:53): Well, the member for Nepean has a bright future shouting at clouds. That was almost as special as the member for Brighton’s contribution. That was the cognitive dissonance of someone who spends his weekends with a megaphone protesting out on the streets of Brighton – because heaven forbid anyone else should aspire to live there, especially a young person or a person who has experienced disadvantage – and who gets up to complain about the Allan Labor government’s efforts to build more homes so that young people, particularly millennials and younger generations, can purchase their own homes.

I am very pleased to make a contribution to the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025. This bill, like much of what the Allan Labor government does, is centred around delivering more homes and more opportunities for Victorians.

As someone who represents, I believe, the second-youngest electorate in Victoria, I am very pleased to see these reforms, because I have twice the state average of renters in the suburb of Footscray and I know that many of those young aspire – he is off to go and shout at some more clouds – to purchase a home, and the Commonwealth Help to Buy scheme will help them do exactly that. If it seems familiar to those playing along at home, it is because the proposed nationwide shared equity scheme is modelled on our very own Victorian Homebuyer Fund. Victoria has been leading the nation in just about every area of housing reform, including helping young Victorians to buy their first home. Our colleagues in Canberra loved our idea so much that they have come up with their own scheme, Help to Buy. The Victorian Homebuyer Fund has already supported more than 13,500 Victorians to become home owners, with another 2300 approved to purchase under the scheme. That is nearly 15,000 Victorians who have a permanent place to call home and 15,000 fewer people in the rental market.

Turning to the purpose of the bill, under the Commonwealth constitution Help to Buy cannot operate in a state unless it either refers relevant state powers or adopts the Commonwealth legislation. This is why the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025 adopts the Commonwealth’s Help to Buy Act 2024. It means that Help to Buy will be able to operate in Victoria and assist more hardworking Victorians into the housing market.

Under the Commonwealth’s Help to Buy scheme Housing Australia will make financial contributions to the purchase of residential properties in exchange for an equity share in those properties. The amendment referenced in this bill is a specific and limited referral of power to the Commonwealth Parliament. It is only for the purpose of the maintenance and operation of the Help to Buy scheme. Without this, any future amendments would not apply in Victoria, which would be impactful and could potentially prevent Victorians from accessing future benefits under the scheme.

The bill also makes minor amendments to the Duties Act 2000, the First Home Owner Grant and Home Buyer Schemes Act 2000 and the Land Tax Act 2005 to clarify that the Commonwealth’s Help to Buy scheme should be treated the same way that the Victorian Homebuyer Fund was under these acts.

Without a referral or an adoption under section 51 of the Commonwealth constitution, the Commonwealth Parliament does not have the constitutional power to operate Help to Buy in states. Helpfully, the former Queensland Labor government led by Premier Steven Miles referred power to the Commonwealth for the purposes of a nationwide shared equity scheme in June last year. The Commonwealth enacted its Help to Buy Act 2024 in December, meaning it is now ready and waiting to be adopted by us here in Victoria. Victoria will be a participating state once it has adopted the Commonwealth’s Help to Buy Act and referred the amendment matters to the Commonwealth Parliament.

The Help to Buy scheme is an exciting opportunity for the rest of Australia to access a shared equity product that has been available to Victorians under the Victorian Homebuyer Fund. The Commonwealth will now offer an equity contribution of up to 40 per cent of the purchase price for new homes and up to 30 per cent for existing homes. Eligible Victorians will only need a 2 per cent deposit to enter the scheme. Applicants purchasing in Melbourne and Geelong are expected to be able to purchase a property up to $850,000 and in regional Victoria up to $650,000.

The Victorian Homebuyer Fund has been nation-leading and tremendously successful in reducing the cost for many Victorians looking to purchase a home. The government has committed a total of $2.8 billion into the Victorian Homebuyer Fund. The Victorian Homebuyer Fund has delivered great outcomes, as I mentioned, for more than 13,500 Victorians to be homeowners so far, and now it is time for the Commonwealth to do its part to support Victorians into home ownership. Staggered allocations through the Victorian Homebuyer Fund will continue to support Victorian home ownership until Help to Buy is established.

The Victorian Homebuyer Fund will close to new applicants on 30 June 2025, when the state will transition to Help to Buy. The State Revenue Office will continue to administer existing Victorian Homebuyer Fund participants. The Commonwealth will provide up to 40 per cent of the purchase price as an equity contribution under Help to Buy, a higher proportion than the Victorian Homebuyer Fund, through which the government provided up to 25 per cent of the purchase price or up to 35 per cent for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Victorians. Help to Buy has a lower minimum deposit of 2 per cent, compared to 5 per cent for the Victorian Homebuyer Fund or 3.5 per cent for Indigenous Australian Victorian Homebuyer Fund applicants.

Off-the-plan and other types of new homes are eligible under the Help to Buy scheme, whereas they are not eligible under the Victorian Homebuyer Fund, and this will help stimulate the supply of new housing. Help to Buy is expected to support another 10,000 low- to middle-income Victorians over four years to purchase a home.

Like the Victorian Homebuyer Fund, Help to Buy will reduce the overall mortgage for homeowners, help overcome the deposit hurdle and avoid the need for lenders mortgage insurance, and Help to Buy participants will have lower ongoing repayments from a smaller home loan as the Commonwealth will share the capital cost of purchasing the home. The financial risk and benefit are shared between the participant and the Commonwealth proportionally to their interests, and crucially, participants in the Help to Buy scheme will be able to skip lenders mortgage insurance. For anyone trying to save up a deposit for a home, getting to 10 per cent is really challenging; getting to 20 per cent can seem insurmountable to avoid that lenders mortgage insurance. So that will be a great help to participants.

I think this is a really exciting reform. It shows that the Commonwealth are willing to do their bit to help Victorians get into the housing market as we build more homes for Victorians in places where they want to live. I commend the bill to the house.

Matthew GUY (Bulleen) (12:03): I just want to make some comments on the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025 and support the member for Brighton’s reasoned amendment on this bill, because basically, as the member for Brighton said, we are referring powers or trying to implement an enabling bill on a piece of legislation for the feds when we do not know the outcome of the Commonwealth election. This is quite pivotal on this whole topic when the current federal government are saying that they apparently want to get onto the Help to Buy initiative – and I will come to that. The federal opposition have a different point of view, and we are trying to rush through enabling legislation for the Help to Buy scheme under a current regime that federal Labor itself might change after the federal election, contingent on whatever that outcome might look like. And now we are rushing through enabling legislation for something that may not even exist.

I think the reason for the member for Brighton’s reasoned amendment is because it does not make sense. The only other government in the country that passed this enabling legislation was defeated and now does not exist anymore – the Queensland Labor government. Now the Victorian Labor government is desperate to rush this enabling legislation through the Parliament when, as the member for Brighton said earlier, the upper house of our Parliament could be debating it in the middle of the federal caretaker period.

Yet I say again: we do not even know what the outcome of that election might look like. Should it be a coalition government or a Labor government federally – even a Labor government might have a different point of view on this scheme should they be in some form of power-sharing arrangement, which a lot of people in Canberra say could be an option, because the Greens have made their view on this as well.

So it does not make much sense that we would rush a piece of legislation through under the circumstances, when clearly we are not sure what the outcome will be. We can debate the merits all we like: ‘It’s going to do this’ and ‘It’s going to do that’. That all might be believable truth should that be what actually comes to pass, but I think the whole point of the member for Brighton’s reasoned amendment is that the likelihood of that coming to pass is so limited.

We then question again why this legislation has come to the Victorian Parliament at this point in time. We can only then deduce that it has come to the Parliament at this point in time for the sake of, yet again, politics. That is the only thing we can deduce. We heard some of those opposite arguing, ‘The opposition would say that.’ Yes, we would say that, because every time we look at the issue of housing, it has been politicised. The government has not even met its own targets – not federal or state. We did not make these targets; they did. Both the Commonwealth Labor government and the state Labor government have made targets on housing that they have not met.

Steve Dimopoulos interjected.

Matthew GUY: Would you mind, sir? I am having a general conversation here.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): Order! Through the Chair.

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Otherwise, you can go back home.

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: Go back to your BMX bed and have your sheets tucked in.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): Member for Bulleen, through the Chair – without assistance, Minister.

Matthew GUY: He is still living at home aged 45.

Members interjecting.

Matthew GUY: I’m talking about you, brother. Anyway, having been brutally interrupted by the member for Oakleigh – I am trying to get over that – I say again that we can only deduce that this is around politics. We on our side of the house, who had greater levels of approvals and a greater level of home deliveries under our period in office than at any period of the state Labor regime, say: why on earth are the government making commitments to the Victorian people, building up young people’s hopes and building up the dreams of so many young Victorians, when they just do not meet those commitments and in fact, as the member for Brighton said in his contribution, we are going backwards? The state is going backwards. The state is not meeting the commitments it made. They made a commitment to building – firstly, under Premier Andrews, they were government-built – 800,000 homes in 10 years. Then that morphed, because it was considered completely ridiculous – which it was – to a mix of 800,000 government and private. Then it morphed again to 800,000 predominantly private. And now there is no target. It is a kind of indicative target.

The minister – and I will not invite him for a second time – said, ‘We’ve got a vision.’ Well, a vision might actually be more than a press release; it might be the building opening.

Steve Dimopoulos interjected.

Matthew GUY: Well, you can build more than other states, but if you are still building sweet FA compared to when we were in office, mate, then I have got to tell you it does not really matter. It does not really matter, compared to when we were in.

Steve Dimopoulos: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, that language was definitely unparliamentary – ‘sweet FA’. Can you ask the member for Bulleen to explain what the ‘f’ and the ‘a’ mean?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): I am not going to dwell on the football association and any relevance it might have to this debate. I remind and encourage the member for Bulleen to ensure that his language is parliamentary. I presume it is, and I ask him to continue.

Matthew GUY: I withdraw, if it has upset the member for Oakleigh. I think he just wants me to actually mention it, but I will not. I will just take him up at another time and mention it to him when the cheese wheel comes out.

The key point, as we have said, of this piece of legislation is that we do not believe that governments should keep making promises to the Australian people or to the Victorian people that they clearly have got no intention of meeting. Thus this piece of enabling legislation is yet another almost hoax upon Australian people who want to get into a home.

There are ways to get new homes built, as I have said in this chamber so many times. For goodness sake, the Minister for Planning has – and I cannot stress this enough – such wideranging powers to actually intervene and bring through PSPs, precinct structure plans, to actually loosen rules around high-rise construction and high-density construction, particularly in the CBD, where it should go. But instead she is choosing not to do that and choosing to make every excuse as to why she should not do that, and I do not understand why. I really do not, because now there is a will for people to do something, like there has never been, and the minister seems to be obsessed with saying she is doing things but not actually doing them. I do not understand why, because now there is the ability for public readiness to say we need someone to actually step in and do something and all we are getting is this government stepping in and issuing press releases – but press releases do not build homes. The Commonwealth government saying they are going to build 1.2 million dwellings by 2038, or whatever it was, is also just a great press release, but it is not real and it is clearly – as the Senate estimates showed last week – not happening.

Why perpetrate that kind of hoax upon people? Why rush this piece of legislation through the Victorian Parliament when at the end of the day it is not necessary at this point? If it is necessary after the federal election, then sure, we will have that discussion. But as the member for Brighton said on his reasoned amendment, it is not necessary at this point in time because we do not know the outcome of the federal election. No election is a lay-down misère for anyone, but when you look at the results, it clearly could go any way federally, and I think we are all looking at that and saying there are a lot of scenarios that might play out. There really are. Therefore it would be silly to then pass enabling legislation that might suit the current federal Parliament, which is about to be prorogued, potentially in a week, potentially in three weeks. Again, we do not know, but it is likely not to return, and if there is a catastrophe in south-east Queensland, it is very likely not to return. Therefore it does not make much sense for us to be doing this at this point in time. I reckon I have laboured that, and I have laboured that for a reason, because as I said, it really does not make much sense.

What I do want to just concentrate on in the last minute is the federal government’s scheme on 1.2 million homes. This promise from the federal government is really – I mean, they have no ability to deliver this. When they have no dialogue with non-Labor states about how these promises are going to be delivered, then you get an outcome like what appeared in Senate estimates in the last week or so where the minister herself claimed they had built thousands of homes, but then when you drill down it is 350 – actually, it is none. You cannot buy an existing home, change the colour of the kitchen and then say, ‘We built another house.’ No, that is not how it works. Your commitment and policy says 1.2 million new – N-E-W – homes. Then of course the definition became a discussion point at estimates, which it should not have been, because the outcome should be trying to get people into homes. Surely if the outcome is trying to get people into homes, then the Parliament, both federal and Victorian, should be better focused on actually doing that and debating doing that, rather than passing enabling legislation on bills and schemes that may be completely redundant even under a federal Labor minority government.

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (12:13): I rise to also support the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025 and to oppose the reasoned amendment put forward by the member for Brighton. I did notice that yet again we have a very procedural reasoned amendment from the member for Brighton. It did not really address the substance of the policy proposal that we have in front of us, but instead he just suggested that we hold off until the federal election. Regarding the member for Bulleen, perhaps the only substantial point he made in his contribution was to repeat that notion that we should wait until after the federal election. Of course, as all of us here know, that has never been the way any government has acted. We would all be in permanent paralysis if we spent all day thinking about what future governments might do. This government, and indeed governments of a Liberal–National persuasion have governed as they govern, and when the federal government changes, we can always come back and change our rules and legislation if we need to do so.

Disappointingly, the member for Murray Plains is no longer here. I did note with interest his contribution, which suggested that the state government’s policy to end the harvesting of native timber affected the building of homes. I can only direct the member for Murray Plains to a fantastic consultancy run by a guy called Tim Woods – IndustryEdge. He used to be a neighbour of mine down Geelong West way. Tim could give the member for Murray Plains some very good statistics on how many homes actually have their frames built with native hardwood, but I suspect it is approximately zero. I think that was an attempt to draw a very long bow connection between that policy and the policy we have before us today in this bill.

I will not be supporting the member for Brighton’s reasoned amendment. Indeed I am supporting the bill. I had the opportunity many years ago to work for the former Treasurer Tim Pallas. I do see that we have the new member for Werribee in the chamber, and I am very pleased to see him here and look forward to his inaugural speech later today, as I understand it. But I know that the former member for Werribee would have had a great interest in the bill we have before us. When I did work in his office we had a document that went around which was a list of tips for new ministerial advisers. I do not know who had originally written it, but one of the tips was that it is easy for all of us to underestimate the extent to which any minister’s powers are restrained by the powers of Parliament and indeed by the constitution. The constitution is a very live document that affects people’s decisions on a weekly basis, and we see that here with this bill in front of us. Section 51, which sets out the powers of the federal government, has many things in it, but it does not have shared equity schemes. As a result our fantastic federal Minister for Housing Clare O’Neil, who is well known to many in this place, has moved federal legislation and then is working with us to move the legislation we have before us today in order to implement the federal government’s scheme.

As previous government speakers have noted, the federal government’s scheme builds directly on a scheme pioneered here in Victoria. I think it was John Cain who first introduced a different form of shared equity scheme in 1989 or thereabouts as part of that Labor government. But then, as I said, the Treasurer for whom I previously worked, the former member for Werribee, had a great interest, and it was him who reintroduced the modern incarnation, I think announced first in 2017 as a pilot program, and then expanded it, as we know, into the Victorian Homebuyer Fund, which has helped now 13,500 Victorians into homes. I understand there are another 2000 or so waiting for approvals. It is worth noting just for the interest of the chamber that this scheme was actually praised at the time, if I remember correctly, by former federal Treasurer Scott Morrison, who said it was a great idea, and we appreciated his support. If only he could talk to his current federal colleagues – or his former colleagues, as they are now.

I want to speak to the reasons that the Treasurer introduced his scheme and the reasons that the Commonwealth are introducing theirs. That of course went to long-term trends in the cost of housing. We know that while the ratio of mortgage payments to income has been relatively stable over time, it has always been difficult to meet mortgage payments for those who are on lower incomes, and this scheme seeks to address that. We are very well aware – and I have spoken on this before – that deposits in particular have become very difficult as interest rates have fallen and asset prices have gone up, and the time it takes for a young person or for any person to save for a deposit is significantly longer than it was for the previous generation. Those factors vary a bit across the state, but clearly for anyone seeking housing close to jobs, educational opportunities, cultural opportunities and so forth those costs have risen. They have particularly risen in recent years for people on low incomes who are trying to purchase a house, and as I said, the deposit for those people is a real challenge.

That brings us to the policy imperative behind the scheme in front of us. It is important to remember that not everyone needs to buy a house. There are other jurisdictions – Germany, most famously, and Switzerland – where rental rates are very high, reflecting the different rental laws there and better support for renters. It has been fantastic to see this state move in that direction with stronger support for renters under this government and very good to see our federal colleagues increase the rate of rent assistance as they have done so significantly, which is probably the single best thing you can do for those who really need help, being those whose main source of income is government payments.

But home ownership is most people’s preference here in Victoria, as it is in most jurisdictions around the world, so the key questions for us are: how can we help people to purchase a home and service their mortgage and, as I said, in particular how can we help them save up their deposit? I do want to speak, as others have, to the exact mechanisms of the Victorian Homebuyer Fund. There is a concept of the bank of mum and dad, where some people are lucky enough to have their parents assist with their loan, and in many respects the Victorian Homebuyer Fund provides the same role for those people who do not have that option.

It first and foremost only requires people to reach a 5 per cent deposit, which as we know is less than the 10 per cent most institutions ask for. That is very important for the reasons I have just set out. Then, when the homebuyer does purchase their home, the state contributes 25 per cent up-front. Importantly, with the state contributing 25 per cent and the homebuyer contributing their 5 per cent deposit, that means the bank is left with only a 70 per cent liability to the value of the home. That is important for the bank because it means that it is a lower risk loan for them and they do not charge the homebuyer lenders mortgage insurance. Anyone who has paid that knows it can often run to $10,000 or more if people are required to pay it. So we save them that cost, we save them having to have such a large deposit and then finally when the homebuyer over time buys out the state government’s stake they do not have to pay interest on that portion. In effect the interest rate they pay over the life of their loan is lower.

I set out all those details just because the Commonwealth’s Help to Buy scheme mimics all of them, I believe, exactly. I think we are still yet to see some final directions from the Commonwealth. We certainly expect that it will. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery. It is for that reason that we will wind down Victoria’s scheme and that this scheme will replace it, I believe, in the middle of this year. Anyone in Preston, Reservoir or anywhere else around the state, if they are looking to buy a home, still has the opportunity to apply for the Victorian Homebuyer Fund at this point, and it has all the benefits that I have just set out.

Finally, there has been some criticism from the federal opposition that these sorts of programs would just have the effect of increasing house prices. First, I do not think that is true as an empirical fact. The scheme is small, there are many other things that play into house prices and I think the equity advantages of this scheme would overwhelm any tiny effect that it might have. But I think it is also important just to touch on our important complementary scheme. We are not letting the supply of housing stay flat in this state. As we know, we have our housing statement and a fantastic Minister for Planning and Minister for Housing and Building, who are undertaking a great deal of work to increase housing supply in order to lower housing prices through that mechanism.

Locally, in Preston we have the new Preston activity centre, which we have just finished a long period of consultation on. We appreciate the minister taking on board some community feedback with respect to the catchment area size and with respect to overshadowing requirements and the new 1000-square-metre requirement for some of the taller buildings. Particularly, the tree canopy requirements that were in the minister’s final policy were, we would like to think, directly inspired by feedback she received from our community reference group, who put that idea forward with a great deal of passion, and it is an idea that we certainly supported. All those policies act importantly together to improve housing affordability for Victorians. I commend the bill to the house. I thank the Department of Treasury and Finance and all the team for their work on it, and I look forward to further debate.

Martin CAMERON (Morwell) (12:23): I rise to speak on the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025, which comes through the house today. I see that the member for Brighton has moved a reasoned amendment, and I do support that. I think on this side, as we have spoken about, with a federal election in the wind we wonder whether we are jumping the gun trying to push this through at this particular stage. Should we at least wait until that goes through? But it is here in the chamber today, and I do rise so I can speak on this. We will see after the federal election whether we are back here again amending or changing as needed.

It just so happens that the committee that I am on at the moment in Parliament is looking at the supply of homes in regional Victoria, which is very apt as this bill comes through. I notice that we do have some members in the chamber and we have the secretariat at the table as well. It is very interesting to travel around regional Victoria and listen to the issues raised by everybody, from people that are trying to break into the housing market to those that are supplying materials to build houses to developers. It is very interesting to get their take on why housing is at a very high premium at the moment, why it costs so much and why it takes so long to actually be able to build a house.

Chris Couzens: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, you might want to remind the member that talking about a current committee inquiry is not appropriate.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): Thank you, member for Geelong. Member for Morwell, if you could continue without pre-empting the work of that committee.

Martin CAMERON: Yes, I can do that. In my area in the Latrobe Valley I also get the opportunity to talk to people that are developers, people that are builders and people that are wanting to be home owners. I am not talking about our committee now, because it has been pointed out to me that I cannot do that. I do not want to tell anybody what we are talking about in that. But there are hardships and the process needs to happen, so I will relay my story from what happens down in the Latrobe Valley. With our housing in the valley, we have a lot of younger people trying to break into the market, and it is a challenge for them to be able to get that deposit together, to go to the bank or a lender, to try and come up with the funds to get a housing loan and to be able to go to a builder and put down that deposit and get the process started.

The member for Murray Plains spoke about the timber industry and what has been going on there. What we have found in the Latrobe Valley is that the younger generation that were involved in the timber industry unfortunately have had their line of secure jobs ripped out from underneath them, so they have had to go looking and travelling for other work and to move away from their families as they try to get the money to make up these deposits that they need. Talking to the builders and also the tradies, there is a real stretch on the trades at the moment to supply their trades to build all the houses that are needed in regional Victoria and also in and around Melbourne. You will find that in regional Victoria we have a lot of individuals that do not want to move to Melbourne and live in a high-rise townhouse around a railway precinct. They want to be able to stay in the country and have their backyard. They might want to stay on an acre lot, as their parents have beforehand, and have that regional lifestyle and not have to move to the city to be able to afford houses. The housing in the city is a little bit more expensive, and it is getting that way in the country as well. We need to make sure that we are doing everything possible to allow regional Victorians to stay in the regions, because that is what makes our regions so much stronger. So we need to make sure we are supplying them with work and jobs but also houses that are affordable, and at the moment it is very hard to get affordable housing. It is also very hard to secure long-term jobs in some parts of regional Victoria without moving outside of that.

One of the other issues we have, from talking to developers down in and around Gippsland, is with the coal overlays. These coal overlays obviously sit around our mines, and we are not allowed to develop the land around them. It is for a good reason; we are supporting and protecting the mines. But we do have some coal overlays which are 40, 50, 60 years old that are now becoming redundant, and they are holding up our local councils’ ability to be able to release land that developers can build not only domestic houses on but also commercial aspects so that people can have secure jobs moving forward. I think that is a really key issue, all the red tape that is thrown on our developers to jump through hoops to secure land and actually bring land to fruition so they can build houses on it for our young people trying to get their first home loan and secure their first house.

I think at the core of every individual is the right and the want to be able to purchase their own home. I think that is the one thing that does make people feel secure – that they do have that asset. We are changing as a society in that we are going to have a generation of people that will not be able to own their own house and will be renters. I think we do enough in that space to facilitate that, but we really do need to make sure that the supply of housing from when we first turn a sod to when people can walk through the front door of their house is paramount in what we do in this chamber. Once we actually do purchase our house and can move in, the other issues that young people are finding at the moment – and it is not just young people, it is probably people right throughout any stage of life – are the costs of being able to maintain that house, with rates and power bills that do come in, so we also need to be able to be doing a lot of work in that area.

I think every member in the chamber is confident of doing their bit to make sure that we can ease those burdens moving forward. I have people that come into my office asking me what we can actually do to move forward more quickly the development of more houses. I know that we get accused sometimes from the other side of being blockers and not wanting new houses. Well, there is nothing further from the truth. I am dealing with ministers with these coal overlays that will not look at changing them. It is fine to be moving forward and building townhouses in inner-city Melbourne, but we do not want that to be at the detriment of people in regional Victoria. We need to make sure that we are capturing everything and everyone to make sure the dream of owning your own house can absolutely be achievable whether you are wanting to live in inner-city Melbourne or regional Victoria.

As I said, there was a reasoned amendment put forward by the member for Brighton. I do support that. There is a lot more work that needs to be done in this space.

Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (12:33): I absolutely loved the member for Morwell’s statement that the coalition are not blockers, and then I thought, ‘Has the member for Morwell read the reasoned amendment?’, because it is literally the absolute definition of being a blocker – a blocker to housing, to the Help to Buy scheme – and I found this a curious policy position that was cooked out of shadow cabinet. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall because there are so many analogies you could come up with of policy malaise and laziness on that side around not making a decision because of a change in government or a change in leadership. I thought, ‘You can’t approach policy like this’, but then I realised that maybe that is why they have not had a housing policy, because they are waiting for changes in scenery around state or federal outcomes. Maybe that is why they have never had an energy policy – because there have been so many leadership changes and so many changes that they wait for a new leader or a new change of government. I thought it underpinned the most simple reasoned amendment I have ever seen: wait for the federal election to see what happens. It underscores something a lot broader than policy here, because we do not have a bipartisan approach to housing in this state. There is a government that wants to build and put people into homes and make it easier for people to afford a home, and we have blockers and knockers on the Liberal–Nationals side who do not have a housing policy, who have not offered any constructive debate around one house that they would build, besides the member for Bulleen. The member for Bulleen is an exception to this, who has said on the record, ‘I built more than any other, it was 62,000, and I’ll keep doing that.’ I acknowledge the member for Bulleen has a big statement to make there, but everyone else on that side is a knocker and a blocker of affordable housing in our state. We put up the Big Housing Build – opposed, ‘Not in my backyard. I don’t want to see any more houses built’, even though we are leading the nation in that contribution, which the Minister for Planning greatly articulated recently.

Richard Riordan interjected.

Tim RICHARDSON: Then we had over there the fish on the hook, the member for Polwarth, who yells at the clouds about housing and yells about wire rope barriers and wind turbines. But his greatest contribution last week was his analogy of housing activity centres in our state to Eastern Europe and Russia – the equivalence of millions of people who lost their lives under regimes of dictatorship. He made an analogy between those regimes and trying to get Victorians into a home. How insane is that. The ludicrous nature of this should play out in its own right. I think the member for Polwarth, the shadow minister, knew it. He knew it at the time. He wanted the grab for the nightly news. I reckon even he thought, ‘I’ve put too much egg in this pie,’ because that was an extraordinary statement. It was not serious policy – what we need in this housing debate. It was not serious around how we get more people in, because someone is going to have to make a decision at some time.

Those on that side have got muscle memory. They have been in opposition so long that they just oppose everything that is ever offered up. It is never about the merit of the idea. If you are opposed to the activity centres, what, are you just going to keep putting people in precinct structure plans out in the growth corridors? Is that the answer? Are you going to carve up the green wedges? We need 2 million more homes in Victoria. Are you going to stifle the growth and the aspirations of millennials and gen Zs who want to own a home, who are stuck with their parents, who will be priced out of their area and their communities and will not get the right to live in the areas that they have grown up in, loved and cherished for two decades of their lives? Is that the policy scenario? When you front up to a debate in months to come and you have the leaders standing up there, you are going to have to answer these questions. You cannot come up with, ‘We don’t want more housing in this particular area. We want to push more’ –

James Newbury: Do you want one in yours? Do you want an activity centre?

Tim RICHARDSON: We will have more housing in the City of Kingston. In the communities I represent we will have more housing coming through – Mentone and Cheltenham. We have had the growth areas development in Keysborough South, which added 15,000 more residents in the southern part of Keysborough. That is the journey we have been on. But everyone has to give a little in this, because we have to make a decision here: should the kids of tomorrow have the right to rent and live in the communities that they have loved, cherished and grown up in? That is my question.

Richard Riordan interjected.

Tim RICHARDSON: The member for Polwarth says, ‘At what cost?’ I will tell you what cost it is: nine times the cost of the average income. That is intergenerational poverty in housing – people not able to rent and not able to afford a mortgage, who work two to three jobs a week trying to pay off their HECS debt or trying to get by just to feed themselves or heat themselves and cannot get anywhere. That is the cost of maybe an extra townhouse in the street or an activity centre around a train station. The cost is putting people into poverty in the future. This Victorian government is trying to do something about it – something in this moment that says, ‘We’re on the side of Victorians.’ And the member that raised the reasoned amendment walks out because he is on the record as opposing time and time again, in the City of Bayside, very incremental growth changes. The City of Bayside has a 33,000 additional housing capacity and in the City of Kingston it is 51,000, and the member for Brighton says, ‘What will your communities do?’ My communities are taking more housing than the member for Brighton’s. But where is the unity here? Where is the bipartisan approach to precinct structure plans?

I will give credit to the member for Bulleen, because there is an intellectual discussion here: how many more are we going to put in existing growth areas, how many are we going to put in PSPs and where is the pinch point? Someone has to make a decision. We have made that decision as a government. We have said 30 per cent in precinct structure plans and land supply into the future, and we have said 70 per cent in existing suburbs. Yes, there is an opportunity cost here. Yes, we are going to see more people living in more densified areas, whether it is a townhouse or apartment developments, but that is not something that has just come to be; that has been the experience in communities across metropolitan Melbourne over the last 15 years. We have seen incremental change. It has not led to horrible outcomes in our communities. It is a changing element in recognition that, as our population grows and as those in my community live near transport hubs and connection points, we are going to have a little bit more housing in that area, and that is to make it more affordable and support people into the future.

How many people will you see put into homelessness who do not have the superannuation basis to fund a home? We see women over the age of 55 as the largest growing cohort of homeless, whether they are not able to generate the superannuation that they need to support their housing outcomes or they have no choice – not able to rent, priced out, experiencing homelessness. I ask those opposite: what is your policy narrative and story for them? Because you cannot just knock and block and have a crack every time, you have got to come in with some ideas. The notion that, with the Help to Buy scheme from the Commonwealth, we should wait for whether opposition leader Mr Dutton or Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is elected, is outsourcing the work to others. What is your policy on it? Are you opposed to another attempt to make housing more affordable and more inclusive in our state? At the moment the coalition have blocked the Big Housing Build, they have blocked the activity centres and they have blocked some of the incentives for people to get into the housing market. They are now waiting for a unicorn to come. They are waiting for something else.

As we know, when in doubt, they go to the playbook that we see playing out internationally – go after minority communities and start talking about immigration. Let us really get to the playbook here: front up to new and emerging communities at multicultural events time and time again and then walk out there and say, ‘Block any more residents coming into our state and into our nation.’ That is really what the policy narrative will be federally. We have seen the really dangerous conversations around where our multicultural communities and new and arriving communities are, even though 65 to 70 per cent of our migration program is via skilled visas in our state. People should never forget that – the overwhelming majority of visas are filling skills shortages in our nation and in our state. We know what the playbook will be. It is actually by design, it is not just laziness. There is only one shot in the locker they have, and that is depopulation – that is, to take down population and say, ‘Look, gen Zs and millennials, the coalition members are of the view that they have worked hard during that time and people should be pushed out.’

This is a narrative that comes through in communities: ‘Well, can’t young people work harder?’ or ‘Can’t young people do this?’ But when that generation bought houses that they own in the community now, the price was three to four times their income; it is now eight to nine times. If we do not make a decision soon; if we do not have a Help to Buy scheme that gets people onto the ladder, that helps them have some sort of ownership and supports them in their mortgage outcome; if we do not have rental assistance and rental reforms; and if we are not building more homes, we are acknowledging that we are not solving the problem and it is only going to get worse. That is the challenge in this bill.

Do not come in with a sentence of a reasoned amendment, like your standard form in here is – to just outsource the work. The muscle memory of underperformance and underwhelming continues. Come in with some ideas. Let us have a policy debate. Tell us what your ideas are. Do they stack up and actually build more homes and get more Victorians into homes? That matters most.

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (12:43): It is a delight this afternoon to listen to the member for Mordialloc read out his speaking notes from the Premier as he desperately tries to curry favour with the leadership in uncertain times on the other side. He is sitting there going, ‘Look at me, I’m a loyal servant. I’ll read the notes out no matter how ludicrous they are, how nonsensical they are. I’ll read them out. I’m down on the second tier now; they’ve moved me from the backbench. They’re going to move me a little bit closer forward – one more row to go. With 18 months left in government I’ve got one more row to go, and I’m going to do whatever I have to do. I’m going to be a good boy.’ Well done, member for Mordialloc. You certainly did a good job today. But of course the rhetoric that you have read out is the rhetoric Victorians have been hearing now for two weeks in the government’s clasp to try and deal with the housing crisis.

This housing crisis is 100 per cent the fault of this government. Within the last three years – the last 18 months in fact – the former Premier and the current Premier said, ‘We can build 80,000 homes a year.’ We know that to help get the price of renting, the price of new home ownership and the price of homes down, we have got to get supply up, we have got to get homes to market and we have got to provide those opportunities, and this government has singly failed.

They have failed, because home starts and home approvals are at record lows for recent times. It is insane. We are barely getting over halfway to the targets that this government has set itself. Where is the accountability for that?

We see state Labor are quick to piggyback off federal Labor’s very late-to-market policy, in the nick of time before the election, with the Help to Buy (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2025, which at the end of the day is not really going to make much difference in the Victorian landscape. We have had similar policies by the state government that have not been taken up and have not been fully subscribed to. Victorians, young Victorians in particular, are singularly being kept out of the market not because of any other cause than the basic cost and affordability of land. Why is land and housing so expensive? Well, this government has now for a long time waged a concerted campaign against property owners, people who are prepared to invest in rental tenancies and others. What this government fundamentally does not understand is if you want to build the towers that this government says are going to be the solution to housing affordability for 70 to 80 per cent of our population over the next 30 years, then you have got to have people prepared to invest in it.

While you overtax foreign investors, who have traditionally made a significant contribution to the apartments built that we have seen in towers in the city, and when you have gone and waged a tax war against those investors, that is less people to invest in property. When you wage war against landlords and publicly demonise landlords through pieces of legislation and regulation after regulation – just continuingly demonise them and then tax them through an egregiously aggressive land tax policy – then you are putting the settings in the wrong direction, and you will not get the properties to market. Basically, young people, first-time property investors and those wanting to get into the market in the suburbs the government so regularly talks about cannot do it alone. They have to do it within a vibrant and dynamic property investment ecosystem, which this government has fundamentally destroyed. They have literally poured the herbicide over the investment and property market here in Victoria to such an extent that people are not investing at that rate. The member for Mordialloc made much of the fact that the opposition is somehow bringing –

Steve Dimopoulos: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member on his feet has to be at least partly factual. We have built more houses than any other state and we have more approvals than any other state, so he is absolutely, fundamentally being unfactual, incorrect and in fact mendacious.

Richard Riordan interjected.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): I will rule on the point of order, member for Polwarth. It is not for me as Chair to adjudicate the facts of this debate. I encourage all members to ensure that their statements in the house are factual. The member for Polwarth to continue.

Richard RIORDAN: I will point out to the government, because it is something that they fundamentally do not understand, that approvals do not allow someone to live in something. An approval is a process that should lead to building. Unfortunately, we have seen example after example of approvals sitting idle, and none more disastrous than the much-touted hundred-storey building in South Melbourne that was going to be full of apartments and housing opportunities. What has happened there? The developers, the builders of that, have walked away. Yes, they had an approval, but the Beulah project did not stack up, like so many other projects in Victoria that do not stack up because of the affordability crunch that this government has caused through its poor taxation and regulation policies that will see the housing crisis continue.

When the member for Mordialloc starts pulling the race card, which the Labor Party love to do on anyone who dares criticise them, I point out to him that if you are going to encourage people to come to Victoria, which is a basic policy of any good government – we want to see more vibrancy and more people coming to our state – you have got to have somewhere for them to live. When you see a housing homeless list that has more than doubled, trebled, quadrupled in the time of this government, from some 9000 people in 2014 to now a figure of some 64,000 families who do not have somewhere to live, then it is only reasonable that the average person on the street would say, ‘Hang on a minute, why do we continue to increase our population when we can’t get the housing stock to match?’ That is a reasonable complaint that the people of Victoria have. It is not a racist rant or slant on any of those things. It is a common observation from people that a government, if it is going to have an aggressive growth policy – which certainly the Liberal Party would have also – has got to match it with places and spaces for people to live and grow, and this government has fundamentally lost the ball on that.

When it seeks to look like it is doing something with the Help to Buy bill, working with the federal government, it is fluff around a broader desire from the Victorian community to actually see some real results in housing. Until this government can demonstrate that its policies and actions will lead to more homes – not planning approvals, not policy statements, not press releases released by this government but an actual increase in housing supply – then it is all for nothing. It does not matter how rosy a spin this government chooses to put on its policy positions; until we actually see concrete poured, bricks laid and weatherboards nailed, it does not provide housing for Victorians.

More importantly, when we talk about helping people to find a home – an affordable, respectable home – it distresses me no end to think that not only have we failed to get extra homes but when we have extra –

Steve Dimopoulos interjected.

Richard RIORDAN: We do not block it. It is distressing to think that this government is so deficient in its ability to manage housing. We have specialty housing in Victoria for groups. We have, for example, homes in St Albans designed for women. It is women’s housing for women escaping domestic violence and others, and yet it is riddled with not only men but bikie gangs and criminal groups who have been able to take over brand new housing that has been provided for a very, very desperate and needy cohort in Victoria. And this government refuses to act. It refuses to enact regulations and procedures to enable the operators of those accommodations to evict the people in them causing problems, making them a completely unsafe environment.

I attended a community meeting only last week with some 40-odd mums and elderly women who have been given the opportunity for new homes but cannot live in them. So not only is this government failing to get the new homes built, but when they do actually get some new homes built and some places for people to live, they singularly fail to manage them in an appropriate and safe way so the people who are supposed to be finding a new home and supposed to be finding somewhere affordable to live cannot live in those places in peace, security and safety.

In fact it was unbelievable to hear that after the SWAT team turned up and arrested five men in the morning, because of the catch-and-release bail laws of this government, those same men were released and back in the accommodation before the sun had set that day. This speaks to how this government is out of control on housing affordability and accessibility. Much needs to be done to improve what we are actually building and when we build it, and most importantly, we have to have an environment where people want to build.

Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (12:53): It is a great pity the opposition do not have a lot to say on this bill, but I think that is emblematic –

Members interjecting.

Nina TAYLOR: No, I am talking about substance here. You can say a lot of words; I am talking about quality and talking about substance. Further to other comments from other colleagues in the chamber, housing is not really their big thing. It is a structural reform. They do not want to know about it. It is like, ‘Oh, just put up a reasoned amendment. That’s a nice, simple, straightforward solution. Then we don’t have to talk too much about it, because we haven’t really thought it through. Millennials and gen Z – who knows with them? They can luck it. Or maybe they’ve got wealthy parents so they can afford it.’ There is nothing wrong with parents helping, I should say, their children to get into homes; I just want to make that caveat. That is a fantastic thing that families can do, but obviously as a Labor government we have to allow for all the contingencies for all Victorians and make sure that they have good structural mechanisms to have the best possibility to get into a home. That is exactly what the Victorian Homebuyer Fund has been all about. I just want to put this on the table, because as I said there was a lot of fluff and dribble from the other side there. I really want to counteract that, because I think it is very important that Victorians know what is actually being done.

The scheme has already supported over 13,500 Victorians to become homeowners, with another 2300 approved to purchase under it.

Obviously that structural reform has made an important pathway for Victorians to be able to get into the market, because we know how hard it is to be able to save that first deposit. Some people just will never get there. We know that. That is the reason why we are having to put these really important structural reforms in that lower the burden for first home buyers and also increase the probability that they can actually get there. But, lo and behold, as was said by a colleague, imitation is the best form of flattery, and the Commonwealth have said, ‘Hey, these Victorians are onto something here. We think we’ll adopt this scheme. This sounds pretty fantastic’, and that means that more people around the country can actually benefit from this equity share scheme which enables them to get into a home. This is a really terrific plan, and I congratulate the Commonwealth for taking it on board. It certainly has worked in Victoria for thousands of Victorians – dare I say thousands – so why not for more Victorians? Relatively speaking, this scheme will run until 30 June 2025, but then when it goes to the Commonwealth that will open it up to Victorians further still and then people around the country, subject to where all these things go at a Commonwealth level.

But heaven forbid if we just said, ‘Look, the Commonwealth might change their mind and this might happen and that might happen.’ Of course it could. Of course there are many, many contingencies with any government, but that is not a reason to just say, ‘Look, we’ll just sit back. We’ll do nothing’, because nothing delivers nothing. On the other hand, if we actually step forward and make sure these structural reforms can work, then we can actually deliver outcomes, as has been proven already, for Victorians in our state.

I do want to just qualify one element, talking about caveats surrounding the referral of this power. The amendment reference in this bill is a specific and limited referral of power to the Commonwealth Parliament. Importantly, it is only for the purpose of the maintenance and operation of the Help to Buy scheme. You can see that these are very specific controls. It is not wideranging beyond the remit which is specific to the Help to Buy scheme. I think that will hopefully give some comfort to those opposite when they are concerned about the referral of that power and the controls which will ensure that it is contained within the remit of the scheme’s functionality.

I want to also speak to some of the further benefits of the scheme, because we have listened to the opposition, who think there are absolutely no benefits to anyone in terms of taking part in this scheme and getting into the market. The Commonwealth will offer an equity contribution of up to 40 per cent of the purchase price for new homes and up to 30 per cent for existing homes. That is a huge chunk. That would be most welcome, I am sure. I do not want to speak for other Victorians, but in anyone’s language we know that that is a huge chunk of the purchase price. Eligible Victorians will only need a 2 per cent deposit to enter the scheme, and that therefore is lowering the risk and making it a possibility where otherwise they might never have that opportunity to get into a home. Applicants purchasing in Melbourne and Geelong are expected to be able to purchase a property up to $850,000 and in regional Victoria up to $650,000. Program directions will sit alongside the Help to Buy act and will assist –

James Newbury interjected.

Nina TAYLOR: Well, let’s just do nothing! Let us just sit on our hands because X or Y might not happen. Let us sit on our hands and do nothing, which is exactly what the opposition are suggesting. No, we are going to plough on here because these are important structural reforms. They have proven themselves already, so that is why we are following through. I should say that the bill expressly preserves Victoria’s existing or future shared equity schemes from inconsistency with the Commonwealth act and the Commonwealth act also contains mechanisms to avoid state shared equity schemes being excluded or limited by Help to Buy. So you can see those very important controls. You need these kinds of controls, particularly when you are referring powers, to make sure that we are looking after our good state of Victoria for the benefit of all Victorians.

Sitting suspended 1.00 pm to 2.02 pm.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.

The SPEAKER: I would like to acknowledge a number of guests in the gallery today: former member for Western Metropolitan Region Khalil Eideh, the former ambassador for the Republic of Türkiye His Excellency Korhan Karakoç and Consul General Doğan Işık. I would also like to acknowledge a number of mayors in the gallery from Cardinia shire, the City of Wodonga, Indigo shire, Towong shire, Alpine shire, Mansfield shire and the City of Albury.