Wednesday, 17 August 2022

Legal and Social Issues Committee

Inquiry into Homelessness in Victoria

Ms LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:23): I rise once again to speak about this government’s deplorable record in public housing. The government keep claiming they are spending more, they keep claiming they are doing more, but in reality their housing waiting lists are blowing out and the numbers in houses are not increasing. We have had two different figures published by this government for the March 2022 waiting list. First of all they said the March 2022 waiting list had blown out to 54 945 applications. We now read on their website that there are actually 64 304 applications on the total waiting list. This is an absolute disgrace. This has blown out by 85.7 per cent since this government came to power in 2014. In addition to that, we are now at 17 August and we still have not seen the June waiting list. God knows how much that has blown out by that the government are hiding. The housing waiting list is available to the minister on a daily basis in live numbers; I know that. I know that the quarterly figure comes to the minister in the first few days of the month. Yet this list that should have been published in early July is still missing in mid August.

Why is the Minister for Housing hiding that list? Well, there is no doubt it is because there is a blowout in it, and we know that he is not delivering more houses in this state. In fact the latest figures he has published show that in Benalla the actual number of public houses under the term of this government has gone down by six, and yet the waiting list has gone up astronomically. We now have more than 460 additional families on a waiting list for priority housing. There are 582 families waiting for priority housing. These are people who are at risk of homelessness, escaping domestic violence or living with disability, yet the number of houses in Benalla has actually gone down by six under this government.

Members interjecting.

Ms LOVELL: Of course we hear the cries from Minister Shing and Ms Terpstra on the other side, trying to distract me, because they do not want these figures on the record. We see the houses going down time and time and time—

Ms Shing: On a point of order, President, I believe that Ms Lovell is misleading the house. All I suggested was that she could go to Brighton, get her sneakers and her iPhone and actually see what is being done as far as public and social housing is concerned.

The PRESIDENT: Thank you, Ms Shing. There is no point of order.

Ms LOVELL: Well, that is typical of this government, that they would try and misrepresent something, because they do not want their record on the record. We know that in June of 2019 this house gave a reference to a Legislative Council committee to do an inquiry into homelessness. Twenty-one months—almost two years—of work was put in by that committee to table that report on homelessness. It was tabled on 4 March 2021, yet this government have not even responded to it—because they do not care. They do not care about the amount of people who are homeless in this state. They do not care about the providers who are trying to solve that problem, who contributed to that report and who actually contributed to that inquiry because they thought something was genuinely going to be done. They do not care about that. All they care about is trying to hide the facts. They have ignored responding to that report, which is a vital report for this state. Not only do the committee deserve a response, the people who actually contributed to that report and the people who are homeless in this state deserve a response from this government. But this government has ignored that report for well over a year. For 17 months they have ignored that report, because they do not want to face up to their failures in public housing in this state. In addition, this government should hang its head in shame at its lack of response to the housing crisis in Victoria and its lack of response to the Legislative Council committee that conducted that inquiry.