Tuesday, 2 August 2022

Department of Treasury and Finance

Budget papers 2022–23

Ms LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (19:16): I rise to speak on the budget 2022–23, which raises the budget for the housing portfolio. This week is national Homelessness Week, and we acknowledge the work that needs to be done in this region and the hard work that I did as Minister for Housing to actually improve issues surrounding homelessness. We drove down the number of people who were sleeping rough and made sure that they had places to live. We also started the very successful youth foyer program. But what we have seen under this government is a complete and utter failure. We have seen the number of homeless people who are sleeping rough increase, and even more importantly what we have seen with the social housing waiting list is an absolute explosion in the number of Victorians who are waiting for housing in this state. New data that has been released by the government shows that the waiting list has increased from 34 618 when we were in government to 55 097. That is a 60 per cent increase in the total new applications. But even worse than that is the priority housing list, which is those people who are homeless, who are escaping domestic violence, who are living with a disability and who have special housing needs. This has increased from 9990 in September 2014 to 30 669. That is more than triple the amount of people on the priority waiting list. Of those 30 669 applications—and I should say these are not people, these are households; these are families actually, 30 669 families—15 302, half of that list, are homeless, and yet this government is leaving them there to languish on the social housing waiting list. In fact the homelessness portion of that list has increased by 1150 families in the past 12 months alone and continues to increase.

The government bragged that they are building 12 000 new homes across the state, but of course when you have got 55 097 families on a housing waiting list, those 12 000 homes are not even going to house a quarter of them. In Shepparton, which we know has the state’s highest homeless rate of 372 in a regional centre, the government are only building 130 properties. What is going to happen to the rest of the people on that list? Currently there are 2383 families who have nominated Shepparton as their preferred location. With only 130 properties being built, that leaves 2253 families still languishing on that list.

This goes on right around country Victoria. There are 3069 families who have nominated Bendigo as their preferred location. The government have said they will build 120 new homes, but when you read the government’s media release about that they acknowledge that 64 of them are actually replacement homes, so there are only 56 new homes. That leaves more than 3000 families languishing on the social housing waiting list. As I said, we do see that right across my region.

In Mildura, another important district in the Northern Victoria Region, there are 976 families who have nominated Mildura as their preferred location. There are around 115 homes, we think, being built in Mildura, but that still leaves 861 families without any hope of getting housed in Mildura. This is a real problem right throughout our state, and this government is not doing enough to address it.

The government actually said that they would build 25 per cent of these new homes in regional Victoria. The only problem with that is that more than 38 per cent of the families on the priority waiting list are actually waiting for homes in regional Victoria. So why is only 25 per cent of the investment going into regional Victoria when there are more people waiting for housing in regional Victoria than there are in metropolitan Melbourne? This is just not good enough. We have a new housing minister now. Hopefully he will do a far better job than the past housing minister, who I took over from when he was the former minister and there were 10 000 homes about to reach the end of their life span because he had not invested in maintenance—and that is happening again.