Thursday, 2 November 2023

Motions

Housing

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (16:03): I move:

That this house recognises the Allan Labor government is getting on with a package of reforms to the planning system to clear the backlog of approvals and build more good-quality homes faster, including:

(1) clearing the backlog of 1400 housing permit applications that have been stuck with councils for more than six months;

(2) making sure big planning decisions are made faster by expanding Victoria’s development facilitation program;

(3) introducing clear planning controls to deliver an additional 60,000 homes around an initial 10 activity centres across Melbourne;

(4) making it easier to build a second small home on your property;

(5) streamlining assessment pathways with a range of new deemed-to-comply residential standards for different types of homes;

(6) introducing legislative reforms to strengthen our planning system;

(7) expanding Future Homes provisions so that it now applies in well-located places across the whole of Victoria and working with industry and universities to develop new designs; and

(8) bolstering the Department of Transport and Planning by bringing on 90 new planners to help with a range of priorities like clearing the backlog, making good decisions faster and increasing housing choice in activity centres.

I rise to speak on motion 204 on the notice paper in my name, largely in relation to the package of reforms to the state’s planning system that was announced in the recent housing statement, which aims to get on with clearing the backlog of planning approvals to the extremely important policy end of building more homes in this state, because that is what the housing statement was focused on. It is more than just a statement, it is a package of fundamental reforms that are going to accelerate housing construction in the state and lead to the delivery of 800,000 new homes in this state over the next decade.

The motion in my name goes through a range of matters. It talks about clearing the backlog of housing permit applications, the more than 1400 that have been stuck with councils for more than six months. It goes to ensuring that the big planning decisions are made faster by expanding the development facilitation program. It looks at introducing clear planning controls to deliver an additional 60,000 homes around an initial 10 activity centres across Melbourne, and I have got a couple in the Southern Metropolitan Region that I am keen to talk about in the context of this debate.

One of the things that I think have really caught the attention of and excited a lot of Victorians is the ability to build a second home – a granny flat out the back, a second small home on your property. We are making it easier to do that. We are about streamlining assessment pathways with a range of new deemed-to-comply residential standards for different types of homes so that more homes can get through the approvals process faster. There will be a package of legislative reforms to strengthen the planning system. We will be expanding the Future Homes provisions so that they now apply in well-located places across the whole of Victoria, and we are working to develop new designs that will apply to these new developments under the Future Homes program. Significantly – and it was the subject of an interjection in the last contribution – we are bolstering the Department of Transport and Planning by recruiting 90 new planners to help with a range of these important priorities, like clearing the backlog, making good decisions faster and increasing housing choice in activity centres across Melbourne.

There was a bit of conjecture earlier in the chamber about what is happening to Victoria’s population. There was a bit of conjecture that people are not coming to Victoria anymore – that somehow there is not growth in Victoria’s population. I found that a little concerning, because unlike most of the things that come from those opposite, those were statements that were completely divorced from reality. We just have to have a little look at the statistics to demonstrate actually what has been going on with Victoria’s population. I know the opposition do not like facts to get in the way of a good story, but I am about to inject a couple of them into this debate today.

For the year ending March 2023, the latest population data available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows 161,700 new Victorians in the last 12 months. It does not sound like our population is going backwards. It has grown by about 2.4 per cent, the second-fastest growth of any state over that period in the nation. I would not want the opposition to get distracted in the debate by facts, but they are important from time to time. It is important to actually understand what is happening in this state if you ever – ever – have any hope of leading it. That is what this government understands. It is that more and more people want to call Victoria home. For them to be able to call Victoria home they have got to have a home to live in, and that is what our housing statement is about. More than just a statement, it is a plan to build 800,000 homes in this state for the hundreds of thousands of Victorians, the new Victorians, who are coming to join us all in what we all know to be the greatest state in this nation.

Of course one of the impacts of population growth over sustained periods of time is that it puts pressure on our housing system. It puts pressure on all the various aspects of housing across our state, and that has the effect of engaging the dynamics of supply and demand in the market. That is fundamentally what has been going on for an extended period of time: more and more people have been coming to Victoria, and we have not been as fast as we need to be in generating the housing for those people to live. That is one of the reasons why we are seeing what I think rightly is being described as a housing crisis, a crisis of both affordability in our housing market – there is a crisis for those who are seeking to buy their first home – but also obviously there are problems with the availability of that supply, and that is having an effect, making homes more and more expensive.

We do absolutely understand that housing is becoming more expensive for Victorians, and that is why we are trying to make sure that more homes get built, because if we have got more homes being built, it is going to put downward pressure on those prices. According to the Centre for Equitable Housing at Per Capita, in 2021 in Australia house prices rose by 19.4 per cent, one of the fastest growth rates in the world. To give you a sense of scale and what has happened and changed over time, in the late 1990s the total value of Australia’s dwelling stock was about twice the value of our total GDP, so to give you a sense of relativities there, but by 2021 this had risen to 4.35 times – the total dwelling stock was valued at 4.35 times the total value of GDP. So in that 20- to 25- or 30-year period, the total value of our housing stock had grown from about twice the total value of GDP to more than four times the value of GDP. That just means largely that our homes have become more expensive.

One of the other things that has happened over that time which has hurt people’s ability to afford homes – and this probably is a consequence of the deliberate design of some national economic architecture over the last decade – is that wages and incomes have not kept up with that growth. One of the problems we have seen over an extended period of time, to get to fundamentally why it is important that we need to do more on housing, is that we have seen a set of economic circumstances where people’s wages have not been growing in the way that has been necessary to afford housing in this country. Part of the reason housing is becoming less and less affordable is because people’s wages have not been going up as fast as they need to, and that obviously is one of the dynamics that is at play. Whilst this housing package and the set of planning reforms that are the subject of this motion obviously cannot address this, it is one of the conditions that is leading to the necessity for taking this sort of action.

The other thing that is also going on that I think is worth putting at the start of this debate for context is that as house prices are going up but incomes are not rising as fast, the amount of household income that is going towards housing has increased significantly over the years, so people today are spending much more of the income that they earn on housing than they have in the past. Again, to give context as to why it is important for the government to be taking the action that it is taking in the housing statement, we know that for a family – again according to the Centre for Equitable Housing at Per Capita – in the 1970s the average mortgage repayment over the course of a mortgage was about 11 per cent of a family’s gross income. By the time we got to the mid-1980s those average repayments over the course of a mortgage had increased to about 19.5 per cent of gross income, but for a family who bought a home in the 2000s, they are spending about 25 per cent of their gross income servicing their mortgage debt. So we know that the effects of increased housing costs and the increased cost of housing relative to incomes over the generation have meant there has been about a 130 per cent increase in the cost of housing as a proportion of income for people buying homes in the 1970s compared to the 2000s, and that trajectory is only increasing.

Why is this relevant? It is relevant because it underlines the need for governments who have levers under their control – and as a state government we have got a set of levers under our control. We do not have the same set of national economic levers that the federal government does, and we for too long have had a federal government that does not care about these issues. That changed, fortunately, last year, and it is good to see new policy directions out of the Commonwealth under the federal Labor government. They will take time to flow through. But here in Victoria, where we do have a set of policy levers that we can pull to do our bit to try and help address the housing crisis, we need to pull them, and that is what the housing statement is doing.

The economics of supply and demand, as I mentioned earlier, tell us fundamentally that the big challenge we have ahead of us in what the state can do is in looking at putting in more supply. The dynamics of supply and demand, even for those of us who did not particularly excel at doing any economics at university, are reasonably simple to understand. As demand increases and supply contracts, prices are going to rise, so what we can do to increase supply should have the effect of ameliorating growth in those prices. If we can overcome the problems of scarcity in a competitive market, we can put downward pressure on prices, and largely that is what our housing package is seeking to do. It is a fact that the current set of planning and permit systems in the state are failing to keep up with demand. In the last year the number of dwellings approved in the state fell by 26 per cent, and we know that there is a backlog of around 1400 applications for multi-unit housing developments that have been sitting with councils for more than six months. Clearly something is not working in the system when we have got these population trends, more people wanting to come here, over time housing going up and more people wanting to buy but not enough housing being approved.

We know, to take an example out of my electorate, the City of Stonnington rejected around 20 per cent of planning applications last year. Yarra council progressed just 38 per cent of applications within the required time frames and had an average processing time of 188 days. We know that restrictive planning laws and restrictive planning frameworks are preventing new developments, and the attitude of some local councils plays an exceptionally important role in deterring new developments. A 2018 report from the Reserve Bank of Australia found that zoning restrictions had raised the price of the average house in Melbourne by 69 per cent above the value of the physical inputs required to provide it. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute found in 2018 that land use planning mechanisms have worked to support the supply of affordable housing in other jurisdictions and in good comparator jurisdictions like the UK and the USA and that they can help us here in Australia.

It is very clear that if you are concerned about taking action on the planning system to deliver more homes, you have got to figure out ways to facilitate more higher density developments occurring in locations in this state that are well serviced already by good pieces of infrastructure, because if we need to build more homes we have basically got two major options. One is to keep building developments on the edge of our current urban developments. I know that is something many in this chamber, particularly you, Acting President Galea, are aware of on Melbourne’s urban boundary. Increasingly and for many, many years the solution has just been, ‘Let’s just keep pushing the boundary out. Let’s just keep building more and more new developments on the outskirts of our existing metropolitan zones,’ and for many that has been the simple solution because it is far away, easy to do, out of sight, out of mind. The consequence of this is that people who need a home, want a cheaper home and buy in these developments are often left languishing without the infrastructure and services that they need to live high-quality lives. That is through no fault of their own, but the infrastructure is not keeping pace.

So the challenge that government has is that it is far more expensive to deliver new infrastructure projects to meet growing urban boundaries than it is to try to facilitate more development closer to existing infrastructure, and much of what this housing statement, on the planning side, is seeking to do is to expedite and make easier the building of more housing closer to existing infrastructure. That is what a large part of the drive in the housing statement is seeking to do, and I particularly want to talk a little bit about the 10 new metropolitan activity centres that the government has designated that will account for a large part of where we want to concentrate much of the new high-density development in our cities.

There were 10 sites identified across metropolitan Melbourne as being where these should take place. I want to talk about the one that I know best in the Southern Metropolitan Region, and that is the activity zone in Moorabbin. I want to talk a little bit about why it makes so much sense to put a metropolitan housing activity centre in that location. For those of you who do not know Moorabbin, there is the Moorabbin train station on the Frankston line, a line where we are investing significantly to make it level crossing free by the end of this decade. A huge amount of infrastructure work has gone on, and there is significant future work planned to remove the last of the level crossings in that region. Moorabbin train station is next to the Nepean Highway, which is one of the significant arterial roads that has thousands of cars going into town and down to Frankston. It is on South Road, enabling connections out to the Mordialloc Freeway. All of this existing infrastructure that the government has invested in – this train station and this activity zone sit at the heart of it. There has already been some good development occurring in and around Moorabbin, but clearly we can do more. If you go down and look at where some of the existing developments are, the multistorey – 10 or so storeys – developments, there is plenty of opportunity for future development to go above the existing shops. It is not, in fact, a long way from just down the Nepean Highway, where someone had the great idea a couple of decades ago to take advantage of the space above the Nepean Highway to help build a shopping centre. So some innovative –

Joe McCracken: Was it Jeff Kennett?

Ryan BATCHELOR: Who knew? By locating more people in this place, we are going to be able to facilitate and take advantage of the existing infrastructure that we have put in place here – transport links, roads, rail, buses and train stations down the road. It is exactly the kind of place that will do.

So the process that the housing statement outlines, the planning reforms that the housing statement identifies as being able to facilitate this development, is that the state will go into this activity centre and develop the new structure plan. It is going to go in and plan this activity centre for this type of development. The Minister for Planning has already had constructive conversations with the local councils in that part of the world, and I know that Minister Kilkenny is having similar conversations with local governments that are affected by other activity centres. By engaging with local councils we are bringing together the best knowledge that we have got at a local level with the best strategic planning we have got at a state level to deliver these centres and build these new homes. Once we have got those structure plans in place, once the planning work has been done to facilitate these additional homes, we will see a development facilitation pathway available for those projects that are valued at more than $50 million or where there is 10 per cent of the total stock for social and affordable housing to enable that development to occur faster.

The policy mix we see here is one where we are working with local councils, using existing infrastructure and promoting social and affordable housing to occur in new sites across Melbourne so that we can put more of the people who are coming to Victoria closer to where we have got existing infrastructure and existing services so we are not putting as much pressure on expanding developments in outer urban areas. We have got that one in Moorabbin which I know, just down the road from my electorate office, but there are others in Broadmeadows, Epping, Frankston, Ringwood, Camberwell Junction, Chadstone, Niddrie at Keilor Road, North Essendon and Preston High Street.

The other thing I will say very briefly is that just at the back of the existing boundary is the old Bayside citizens advice bureau, which is now the Bayside Community Information and Support Service, which is providing exceptional support to individuals in that part of the world who need assistance. I visited their premises the other week and had a good chat to them about what we need to do to support them, and I hope that, working with the local council over the next few years as we develop and transform this part of the world, we can help expand their footprint and give them facilities that meet their needs. There is also, just up the road, a site where some new social housing is going, and I think that will add exceptional value to the local community.

There are a couple of other things I want to just quickly go through. I have spent quite a long time talking about the exciting activity centre that we are going to get in Moorabbin, but I just want to talk about just some of the other things that we are going to do as part of the housing statement to help facilitate quicker planning across the state. We want to clear this backlog of planning applications – 1400 planning applications – that have been stuck with councils for too long. We know that faster approvals mean getting more homes sooner and that is going to ease the pressure on house prices. We have got to use, as I said, the development facilitation program so that where we have got large developments of at least $50 million and where they deliver at least 10 per cent social and affordable housing, including possible new build-to-rent projects, they are able to be facilitated and developed sooner.

I just want to spend a couple of minutes talking about one of the areas where I think there is a lot of excitement, and that is making it easier to build a small second home on your property. Currently there are a range of restrictions that prevent people from building a small second home out the back, what many would call in old parlance a granny flat – it does not always have to be your granny that goes out there; it could be anyone – and it has been quite difficult. People have found very frustrating the barriers that are put in place when converting maybe an old shed into a dwelling or maybe building a new facility, and we know that as people look for different ways to do the kind of intergenerational living that we know is becoming increasingly common, the burden of getting a planning application has been quite significant. That is why in most circumstances you are not going to need a planning permit if these small second homes are less than 60 square metres.

I just want to talk a little bit about some research that was released just the other day which goes into a bit of detail about just how much space there is for this to occur, should landowners want to of course; this is a choice that individuals can make, that families can make. Research published a couple of weeks ago identifies around 655 homes across capital cities in Australia, so Australia-wide, that have the space to build a self-contained two-bedroom development onsite. In Melbourne around 13.2 per cent of properties have the potential to do this should the individuals who own these homes choose to do so. This is a choice for landowners, making it easier should they desire to build a new flat out the back of their existing property for an elderly relative. Maybe it is for a grown child who cannot seem to leave the nest.

I do not wish to go into any kind of speculation about the range of options that people could put these new second properties to. Suffice to say that building them will generate a lot of additional housing in a relatively short period of time relatively efficiently. We have seen certainly that the experience of other jurisdictions where they have introduced similar rules is that it has been quite quick for this to occur. In parts of Sydney and parts of New South Wales where similar rules were introduced and changed not too long ago there was a marked uptake of these changes, and quite quickly we saw more dwellings being built at the back of other people’s houses – a very efficient way of building extra rooms to accommodate extra people without needing to build up or out. I think we are seeing sensible decisions like this as being significant ways the state government, through the housing statement, is facilitating what we are doing.

The other thing that I think is important just to briefly touch on is the Future Homes program. For those of you who do not know about it, I will just spend 30 seconds explaining. Future Homes is a program that has sets of ready-made architectural designs which can be purchased by developers, adapted to a site and facilitated through a streamlined planning process. Architectural thought goes into particular high-quality designs that we can place on sites to ensure that, instead of having to start from scratch, developers in these sorts of places can take what is largely a ready-made, off-the-shelf design to accommodate new housing and get faster development.

We are going to create more high-quality designs for four- and five-storey developments and expand the areas they can be used. We are also changing the types of homes that require planning permits so that single dwellings on lots bigger than 300 square metres and not covered by a pre-existing overlay will no longer require a planning permit. This is going to streamline the planning system and reduce the burden on councils, but fundamentally we hope to expand the number of dwellings and the capacity of these dwellings to accommodate Victoria’s growing population, because we know that Victoria’s population is growing. I think it was by about 2.4 per cent in the last year that our population has grown. There is a lot that has gone into causing the housing crisis in this state, and there is a lot that needs to be done to try and fix it. What the government has done in the housing statement is demonstrate that it is committed to delivering the homes that Victorians need.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (16:34): I thank Mr Batchelor for moving this motion, because it gives me an opportunity to respond to the motion and what he has put forward and what he has said. It gives us an excellent opportunity to consider this tired old Labor government’s record on housing. As many of you know, Labor have been in government for almost a decade, and far from delivering abundant housing, Labor have delivered Victoria’s rental and housing availability crisis. The housing statement is an admission that the status quo is not working. In fact the former Premier said that the status quo is not an option. If only Labor was not responsible for the status quo. According to SQM Research, when Labor was first elected in 2014, Melbourne had 12,713 homes available to rent. That is quite a lot. Despite our state losing population during the pandemic and the flood of government press releases about home building, there are now only 6449 homes available to rent – all of this while our state is set to grow by 10 million by 2050. Labor is responsible for the status quo. The basic economics of supply and demand will tell you when there are less homes available, that will increase the price.

The government members, the Premier and the former Premier should be saying, ‘It’s me, hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.’ That is what they should be saying, because they are the problem. They are responsible for the status quo. Unfortunately, when it comes to housing, young people and renters are paying the price for Labor’s ineptitude. I want to quickly go to Mr Batchelor’s comment about precincts and activity centres – activity zones – and he did mention Broadmeadows in my electorate as an activity centre. I did wonder whether they could enlighten me and my constituents on whether an upgrade to Broadmeadows station would be considered as part of the Broadmeadows activity centre. We know RACV rated it in the top five worst train stations in Victoria, but I also say this because the former member for Broadmeadows actually promised an upgrade to Broadmeadows train station and then the government was forced later on to clean up his mess and say that basically the former member was freewheeling and, no, there was not a promised upgrade. But there is, I guess, some good news. The government has promised an upgrade to Broadmeadows station – in 2052 when the Suburban Rail Loop part 2 is completed. Isn’t that nice? Isn’t that nice for my constituents who have long waited for an upgrade to Broadmeadows station?

I did ponder it, and I would query that Preston has also been set as an activity centre, which will include a much greater, higher density in Preston. I find that curious because the government themselves have declared themselves quite nimby, and they heritage-listed the Preston Market and set the Preston Market development back and scaled it right down. They have clearly had a wink-wink, nudge-nudge moment and said, ‘Well, there might not be an economic return on investment here, but for the rest of Preston, it is on.’ Given that the Preston Market is right next to Bell station, the government policy so far seems to go against what the housing statement says about housing around transport infrastructure. I would note that the government did adopt the Liberals’ and Nationals’ Preston Market election policy, which was to heritage-list the sheds at the Preston Market. So there is the government taking up a good suggestion by the opposition. As Dr Ratnam would know, the government were completely silent on the Preston Market during the election campaign. They actually did not have a policy for it at all. The new member had a very close brush with political death, I would say.

The housing statement outlines no plan to restore confidence in our troubled residential construction sector. We have seen with the collapse of Porter Davis and many other residential construction companies that we do have a real problem in Victoria. We do have a real problem with supplies, labour and inflation driving up costs, and many experts believe that the mismanaged Big Build, which is over $30 billion over budget, is responsible for driving up the cost of labour, supplies and materials and is dampening the residential construction sector and the ability of our builders to build homes. The housing statement has basically blown up before it has begun. As revealed in the Age:

The rate of home building in Victoria has dropped to the lowest ebb for almost three decades …

the lowest level since the early 1990s, putting doubt on the government achieving its housing statement targets. Experts say that:

The state government could be forced to consider pausing major infrastructure projects to free up workers and resources …

given Victoria has suffered the largest drop in the number of construction workers, an 11 per cent decrease. A senior lecturer in construction management at Melbourne University said that it is clearly not possible in regard to the government’s housing statement:

The 800,000 target is not based on an understanding of the current construction capacity …

So you have got multiple experts and industry sources saying it is not possible. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics over 83 per cent of those aged in the 15 to 24 age bracket and over 55 per cent in the 25 to 34 age bracket rent. Anyone who is currently a renter will tell you how tough the market is right now not only in terms of rents but also in terms of finding a place, and I elaborated on that yesterday in the rental freeze debate. Recent data from CBRE shows that rents are at record levels with median rents growing at 11.6 per cent and median unit rents growing at 22 per cent year on year. Worse still, there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Vacancy rates have dropped a further 2.5 per cent year on year, indicating continued pressure on the residential rental market. I am making the significant point that Labor are responsible for the status quo. What have they been doing on housing since 2014? They are responsible for the current housing crisis we find ourselves in.

We know – and I was chatting about it before – the housing statement is a big flashy document with lots of pages saying ‘Intentionally left blank’, and then there is a secret chapter that came afterwards, a ‘Part 2: the Taxes’. Labor seem to think there are no consequences for increasing taxes. The consequences are these: in 2014 weekly rents were around $466; now they are $702 per week – that is a 52 per cent increase. Labor have been in government since 2014. Everything that is happening at the moment has happened under their watch. They have been sitting there for almost a decade, and there have been many developments the government have knocked back across that time. We saw the former Premier early on in his premiership visiting places and saying, ‘There will be no inappropriate development here and no inappropriate development there.’

As colleagues would be aware from my maiden speech and since then, I am a self-professed yimby. I was actually a yimby before it was cool, before there were official yimby organisations, and have been for a long time, because we value home ownership and the ability of people to find a place to call their own home. If they are in their own home, they have an investment for a lifetime, they have an ability to have a stake in their community and they have an ability to have a stake in Victoria.

But again Labor has mismanaged housing. They have increased taxes on housing. We have got the highest housing taxes in the states. So to meet their target, Labor need to build 220 houses per day every day, including weekends, Anzac Day, Christmas Day, Good Friday – all of those – Grand Final Friday, for 10 years. As I said, Labor’s mismanaged and sometimes ill-regarded and ill-conceived Big Build is sucking up labour, materials and supplies from across the state, pushing up construction costs and pushing the dream of home ownership and lower rents even further away.

There is a real problem with investment, and that is a result of government taxes. One in four Melbourne landlords have sold their rental homes in the past year according to the Property Investment Professionals of Australia survey. This is a significant trend that should raise concern for tenants across the city, because when you have investors fleeing the market that rental availability is no longer there. A survey of 1724 investors across the country, including 538 in Victoria, revealed that property taxes were the primary motivation for investors to sell. Melbourne’s decline in popularity among property investors is striking, as it went from being perceived as the nation’s second-best place to buy in 2017 to just a 4 per cent approval, with only Hobart ranking lower.

Ben Kingsley, the chair of the Property Investors Council of Australia and managing director of Empower Wealth, expressed concern that Victoria could lose investors to other states or discourage them from investing in property altogether. He also expects a surge in investor sales in Victoria in the coming 12 months due to upcoming land tax changes starting in January. We were here warning you about that land tax, but you can all face the consequences of that when investors flee the state.

And we see another tax, as I was mentioning earlier – expanding the growth areas infrastructure contribution (GAIC) for all Victoria. Two cabinet ministers confirmed that it is being discussed. They have mismanaged that fund. There is over half a billion dollars sitting in government coffers waiting to be spent when it should be being spent in growth areas, like in my electorate – in Greenvale or in Kalkallo or in Wallan or Beveridge. But it is not. These people should be getting footbridges, new bus routes, bus stops and community facilities as they move in, not years after, but that is what we have been getting under this government. They take all the stamp duty revenue from all these new estates in our growth areas and they spend it elsewhere.

They are spending $1 billion on level crossings in Brunswick. I reckon the people of Kalkallo deserve to have Donnybrook Road duplicated much more than the people of Brunswick deserve to have their level crossing removed. The government has approved the building of tens of thousands of housing estates on Donnybrook Road in the seat of Kalkallo and the seat of Yan Yean and has left residents trapped in their own housing estates. It takes over an hour to get out of your own housing estate when you are on Donnybrook Road. One of my residents, Rebecca, went into labour during peak hour in the morning, and it took her an hour to get out of her housing estate. That is because the government has not spent on the required infrastructure. So they have basically given up on growth areas. They have said, ‘It’s all too hard.’ You have not even tried. You have not even spent the money available in growth areas. You have not even tried to build out in growth areas, because you have not actually invested there. You have approved everything but not actually spent the money that you collect from the stamp duty revenue. You would rather spend it on $1 billion for level crossings in Brunswick or dog parks in Brunswick, not actually on duplicating the entirety of Mickleham Road, duplicating the entirety of Donnybrook Road –

Harriet Shing: On a point of order, Acting President, perhaps this is an opportunity for Mr Mulholland to refresh his water and to then lean into the remaining 13 minutes that he has. I am struggling with understanding how this remains relevant to the point at hand. Mr Mulholland began well, but we appear to have wandered off into some kind of parallel universe, so perhaps you might bring him back to the subject at hand.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Mr Mulholland, back to the bill, please.

Evan MULHOLLAND: If Ms Shing had been following along, I was referring to a potential expansion of the GAIC, and I was talking about Victoria being the highest taxed state in the country in terms of property taxes and the expansion of the GAIC, the impact that would have on all of Victoria and the impact that would have on property investment and therefore supply. So I think it is entirely related to the motion because of that. It is all related to the housing market, and I was talking about that particular tax because it is a tax that they have completely botched. So I think I am being entirely relevant.

Since 2009–10 new apartments have been taking more than 40 per cent longer to build, townhouses have been taking nearly 28 per cent longer and freestanding homes nearly 25 per cent longer. That is Labor’s record. In the end young people, young families and renters pay for Labor’s mistakes and inaction on housing. We must reject Labor’s attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of renters with their housing statement, which is collapsing faster than the Commonwealth Games. We know that because experts, industry and economists are all saying it is unachievable.

Victorians need more private rental supply to solve the problem. That means we need to attract more investment, that means we need to stop taxing property that brings that investment. We know through our consultation at least that you have investors, large superannuation funds and others that are looking elsewhere, places other than Victoria. We need them to come into Victoria to build, to invest in homes. We need them to. When you have got one in four investors getting out of property, that is a problem. Perhaps taxing them is the government’s way of getting ordinary mum-and-dad investors out of the housing market so their mates in industry super can swoop in. Maybe that is the grand scheme. It starts by ending Labor’s punitive taxes on homes and restoring integrity to public projects and decision-making to end the waste and mismanagement of this government.

Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (16:53): What a delight to follow my colleague in the Northern Metropolitan Region Mr Mulholland and speak on motion 204. We will I suspect differ in our remarks, and I will begin of course by highlighting that the Allan Labor government has a record when it comes to housing reform and making sure that there are critical investments to deliver record amounts of homes to Victorians. This government is delivering record investment with the implementation of these reforms as laid out in the motion before us, which will create a more streamlined process for the application of these said reforms.

Eliminating the requirement for a planning permit – I might start there. There is a lot in the motion, and I thank Mr Batchelor for putting together such a vast motion that has given us so much to talk about today. But with that, I want to talk about – what did we call them? – secondary residences, or granny flats as we know them. I think we should probably keep that terminology. It is known and loved right around the world, but I have got to say it is a great step forward to streamline Victorians’ ability to build in their own backyards. This change not only empowers home owners to exercise their freedom in designing and building their homes but makes it easier for families to create the living spaces that best suit their needs and preferences. I have spent some time with Kids Under Cover, who are a phenomenal provider of additional home space for families and children, and I cannot speak highly enough about them and their work putting some fantastic unit apartments in the back, particularly needed for big growing families. It is actually exceptional, and I just want to pay them a bit of credit for that. This work and this reform will encourage innovation, economic growth and a stronger sense of community, ultimately contributing to more dynamic solutions.

That is not all. There is of course so much more that I could talk about. The centres of activity is one that has got some conversation started here in the chamber, but I have got to say, by strategically placing these homes, which is what we are doing – the 60,000 homes – around the state in centres of activity we will see vibrant, dynamic communities that offer such numerous benefits to Victorians and our state. I am so excited about these 60,000 homes, because what I hear is that a great number of them will be around the Northern Metropolitan Region. You see, guiding investments in the things a growing community needs, like improved streets, parks and community infrastructure, is entirely necessary, as is providing increased certainty to the community and activity centres about what kind of infrastructure and new development we can expect and developing models for clearer and simpler planning controls which can be replicated in the other centres, not just those in the northern suburbs. As was discussed by my colleague Mr Mulholland, there are some in, yes, Preston and, yes, Broadmeadows. There are others that I want to give a shout-out to, including Epping and North Essendon, which is great. These will give people so many options for housing in our great and mighty northern suburbs, and I am sure that my parliamentary colleagues in the northern suburbs are just as excited as I am to see all these new homes springing up all across the northern suburbs and are looking forward to welcoming new families into the Northern Metropolitan Region.

Having applications sit in our system for far too long just does not get houses built. We will begin the work to clear the backlog of 1400 housing permit applications that have been stuck for more than six months – six months. That is incredible. We have a dedicated team that works with project proponents, local councils and a referral agency to resolve issues delaying decision-making to avoid the projects ending up at VCAT and just getting the homes built, because that is what we need. Once we have a clearer picture of projects, and if decisions keep lagging, then the Minister for Planning will not hesitate to call them in.

These reforms highlight the government’s understanding of the importance of safe and secure housing in nurturing vibrant communities. Adequate housing is not just a human need; it forms the foundation of education, health care and overall community wellbeing. By prioritising the construction of these homes, the government is indeed fostering an environment where families can thrive – how exciting is that – children can excel in school and communities can grow, they can thrive and they can prosper. The government’s commitment to positive reforms in planning moves us towards creating more efficient, sustainable and inclusive communities. We are focusing on comprehensive planning reforms, and we are making sure that big decisions are made faster by expanding Victoria’s development facilitation program. This is an especially exciting one: we are streamlining the planning process for medium- to high-density residential developments that meet certain set criteria.

Let me tell you about that. That is construction costs worth at least $50 million in Melbourne or $15 million in regional Victoria and delivering at least 10 per cent affordable housing. These will include new build-to-rent projects. I will take a moment to shout out that I have in fact visited some of these build-to-rent projects in development right now and know from conversations with the Minister for Planning that there is an awful lot of enthusiasm and interest from the developer community about getting on board with the Victorian development facilitation program. It means that around 13,200 additional homes will be brought to market that would otherwise be delayed, and it will cut application time frames for these types of projects from around more than 12 months down to four.

Clearing the backlog of housing applications is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, it fosters trust between government and the community, showing that the authorities are responsive to the needs of the people, and timely approval of housing applications means families can plan their futures with confidence, knowing that their situations are secure. We have also made changes to the types of homes that require planning permits. Single dwellings on lots bigger than 300 square metres and not covered by an overlay will no longer require a planning permit. Single dwellings on lots smaller than 300 square metres where an overlay does not exist will be decided within 10 days – just 10 days – and I cannot imagine what a difference that will make. These are simple, practical changes that will see Victoria’s planning laws change to have the interests of Victorians front and centre.

Talking about planning, I have got to say that this week the Premier, the Minister for Planning and the Minister for Skills and TAFE from this place Gayle Tierney launched a recruitment campaign for 90 new planners to deliver the bold reforms announced in Victoria’s landmark housing statement, clearing the backlog of applications. Ninety is extraordinary. We need these planners, so if you are thinking about being a town planner, now is indeed the time to get on board. They are to be based in the Department of Transport and Planning. They will work in partnership with councils to support planners at a local level, delivering the state’s planning priorities and making decisions faster. By hiring these additional planners – that is 90 additional planners – the government is investing in the expertise and the workforce necessary to speed up the approval process for housing applications. This means that Victorians waiting for their housing projects to be approved will experience reduced waiting times, and we know what a difference that will make. Shorter approval time lines translate into families being able to move into their homes sooner, providing them with much-needed stability and security.

The Allan Labor government is also ensuring the construction industry has a pipeline of skilled workers to build thousands of new homes, lifting eligibility restrictions for the free TAFE program – and don’t we just love free TAFE over on the side of the chamber – so all Victorians can access government-subsidised training in more than 80 in-demand courses. There are some fantastic courses in that list of 80, let me tell you. Since the introduction of free TAFE in 2019, more than 153,000 students, let me tell you, have saved more than $394 million in tuition fees. I know Ms Terpstra is a big fan of free TAFE – she will not stop talking about it – with courses in fields like building surveying, building construction, civil construction, plumbing, services and many more, targeted at delivering the workers that will help the state reach its ambitious building target.

In addition to all that, we have the Allan Labor government’s plan to invest $400 million into growth corridors, giving tremendous benefits to current and future residents. Let me tell you, by putting these funds into growth corridor suburbs the government is addressing the critical infrastructure needs, it is true, so that communities and suburbs all around Victoria can thrive. These strategic investments improve the overall quality of life for residents but also plan for the long-term future, because they might be new right now but they will be thriving suburbs of the future. Let me just say that we also see that this investment demonstrates that the government is absolutely committed to reducing disparities between the different suburbs, ensuring that growth and development are not limited to urban centres alone. We are focused on the growth corridor suburbs and promoting balanced development, encouraging even more distribution of the resources and the opportunities.

There is so much more that I could go on with, but let me just tell you we are not stopping there when it comes to seeing the opportunities from the housing statement and it being linked to real action on climate change. You see, we are promoting energy-efficient housing, some green spaces and eco-friendly infrastructure – there you go – and it aligns with the desire of so many Victorians to live a more sustainable life for future generations. Also, it encourages the overall quality of life and contributes to the preservation of Victoria’s most beloved and most appreciated natural beauty for the generations to come. We speak often in this place about just what a fine place the outdoors is.

Let me just say we are expanding the Future Homes program as well – there is so much more to go – to encourage the building of more new builds. This was a really interesting one, and I remember reading it with great enthusiasm, actually, because I thought, ‘How is it that we are doing this?’ What is happening with the Future Homes program is that four sets of ready-made architectural designs can be purchased by developers and adapted through a streamlined planning process. This will create more high density of the sort of four- and five-storey developments and will expand these into where they can be used. This is actually really exciting and will reduce a whole lot of unnecessary delays by fostering the development of neighbourhoods with easy access to essential amenity: health care, education and public transport. There really is a sense of belonging, a real sense of community that will be created here, including reinforcing the importance of social bonds and community.

The housing statement underscores the government’s commitment to economic growth and of course job creation. We are stimulating the economic powerhouse of the construction sector, generating employment opportunities and stability. Can I just say that there is of course a need to just get on with it and make it faster, and that is what this is doing. Faster approvals mean more homes sooner. The changes before us are a testament to the government’s dedication to its people and addressing the diverse needs and aspirations of the Victorian people. We are focused on what truly matters: providing affordable housing, fostering sustainability, promoting community wellbeing and driving economic growth. I have got to say that the housing statement really does represent a very significant leap forward towards building a better, more inclusive and prosperous future for the residents of Victoria.

In the housing statement what was not mentioned was a range of reforms around renters, some of which I know have been very enthusiastically supported by renters, including the limiting of rental increases and the fact that you cannot move out of one place and into another – you move in and it is not very long before the real estate agent finishes you up to move somebody else in and they jack up the rent. That is over now. That is one that I know was particularly exciting for a great number of folks in the rental market.

The other one that comes to mind is of course about bonds and bond transfers. I cannot tell you what a big change that will make, so I am very excited indeed to see that one, because the Allan Labor government are the only ones in this place who have a really solid, dignified plan for housing and are willing to commit to tangible actions that will make a difference each and every day to the lives of Victorians. We are doing the work that will see transformative change in the housing and planning sectors so Victorians can be better off. We are getting on with it. We are getting it done.

I think perhaps before I wind up I will just say that on Tuesday morning that announcement about 90 town planners was very exciting indeed, and if members know of folks who are interested in taking up a career in planning, please get on board. Right now is the time for your career to well and truly take off.

Matthew BACH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:08): Few issues are more important for the future of our state and for the wellbeing of the Victorian people than housing, and so I am very pleased that Mr Batchelor has brought forward his motion today. I am a colleague of Mr Batchelor on the current inquiry into Victoria’s rental and housing crisis, and I both note and approve of so much of the aspiration of Mr Batchelor’s motion. He talks about the government’s reforms to the planning system. He talks about the need to build more good-quality homes and faster. He talks about making big decisions more quickly. He talks about streamlining assessment pathways and strengthening our planning system. He talks about increasing housing choice in activity centres. All of these are laudable aspirations.

We all know that right now there is such a crisis when it comes to the affordability of housing. There is a crisis when it comes to home ownership and affordability for those who want to buy a home, especially for younger people. There is a real crisis in our rental market as well, and whilst I note and approve of so much of the aspiration put forward by Mr Batchelor, I also acknowledge the points made by Mr Mulholland regarding the depth of the crisis that we are in here in Victoria. Mr Mulholland stepped through some of the reasons for that crisis. What I would like to do then is to talk about what I believe is the way forward. I note the government’s aspiration. My view, like Mr Mulholland’s, is that the government does not go anywhere near far enough in its stated reforms. Mr Mulholland was a yimby before it was cool to be a yimby. I only became a yimby once I realised that it was cool to be one, so I may be late to this party. But I am here now, and –

Tom McIntosh: You’re very cool.

Matthew BACH: Thank you, Macca. I am keen to use the time that I have left to push for good housing policy and good planning policy. I was interested to note that before he left this place the former Premier made some comments to the effect that young Victorians are not interested in the great Australian dream of home ownership. In the inquiry that Mr Batchelor and I have been involved in – Mr Luu is the chairperson of that inquiry – we have heard from so many renters their dreadful stories about the situation they find themselves in, about a total lack of supply and about unaffordability, yet what we have consistently heard is that there is such a desire from young Victorians in particular to get into the housing market, to own their own home.

We have also heard really consistent evidence from an interesting and eclectic array of experts about the need to build more homes where people want to live. Mr Batchelor talked about that. I agree with him. We do not want to continue to endlessly sprawl as a city, to push people further and further away from infrastructure. Infrastructure Victoria released a report just the other day to talk about the massive cost of our current model where the city just sprawls ever further away from the centre – the massive infrastructure costs. An organisation that we heard from at our committee the other day called YIMBY Melbourne has also recently released a report talking about the missing middle, and it was interesting that on the same day we heard from YIMBY Melbourne we also heard from the Centre for Independent Studies and the Grattan Institute. You do not always get unanimity from the Centre for Independent Studies and the Grattan Institute, but we did at the inquiry the other day – that there has been massive failure in our housing market because of big government, because of state government and local government intervention in the housing market, which has stopped reasonable development in places where people want to live.

Like I say, I do not criticise the intent of much of Mr Batchelor’s motion. But noting what I have recently heard from YIMBY Melbourne, from the Centre for Independent Studies and from the Grattan Institute, among other expert bodies like Infrastructure Victoria, an excellent creation of this government, I think we need to go further, so I would use the opportunity that I have today to talk on this motion from Mr Batchelor to again say that if what we want is housing abundance, to achieve housing abundance we also must have housing freedom. We must look at evidence-based policies like abolishing stamp duty and instead moving to a land tax arrangement, like strict housing targets for local councils, linked then to necessary reforms to the Planning and Environment Act 1987 to make the planning system far more permissive. We need broad upzoning right across the inner suburbs and the middle suburbs, where there is excellent infrastructure and where we know people want to live. In my view we need massive reforms of heritage overlays, which we know are weaponised by virtue-signalling busybodies at local councils. It was interesting to hear from Ms Watt about links to climate change – because of the restrictive nature of heritage overlays, you have busybodies from local councils ripping solar panels off the roofs of home owners in our inner and middle suburbs because that is not allowed under our current arrangements, which is surely mad.

I think that we should continue to want to grow as a city, and there is a way of doing this that is sustainable. I want to say to my friends on this side of the house that there is a way to do this that relies on both good policy and also good politics. Now that I am leaving this place, I can cease my charade that I am not obsessed with published opinion polling. The most recent opinion polls here in Victoria show that very few younger people are currently interested in voting for the Liberal Party, and that is a matter of great regret for me. I joined the Liberal Party at university. I was really passionately excited about Liberal values, but at the moment I have to acknowledge that we are not exciting young people about voting for the Liberal Party. The most recent published opinion poll shows that about 16 per cent of young people aged between 18 and 34 want to preference the Liberal Party first. That is a figure dwarfed by those who want to vote Labor first. It is also lower than the figure who want to vote first for the Greens party, but it does not have to be thus. In Canada, for example, we have a centre-right opposition that is poised to win government that has the support of 40 per cent of millennials – greater support among millennials than the left-wing government in Canada – and my understanding is the best analysis of these figures points to the policies of the Canadian opposition when it comes to housing freedom and housing abundance. Many within the Canadian centre-right opposition are avowed yimbys.

I have been speaking for some time about what I believe is an exciting new Liberal agenda. I accept the comments that have been made recently by many members of the Liberal Party that to win government in Victoria – which we have not done for some time, and obviously we have not held government consistently for so long in this state – we cannot be Labor-lite. We must draw clear, sharp, hard dividing lines between what we are offering and what the government is offering. Victorians must be clear that if they vote for the Liberal Party at the next election, well, they will be getting a different government, a better government, than the government they have right now. I would urge my colleagues to be brave in pursuit of Menzian values on housing and on housing freedom. I would urge my colleagues not to be intimidated by selfish, rich geriatrics who oftentimes may vote for us but who we know always have a predilection towards bigger government and greater regulation to protect their own wealth at the expense of younger people and new migrants. I would urge my colleagues to be brave, because I believe not only is this very good policy, it is also good politics, because Victoria’s demographics are changing. We must look to the future. We must look to empower younger people, and the status quo is not an option, as Mr Mulholland said.

There is a grain of truth in what the former Premier said about the views of young people towards housing. I know that many young people have currently lost hope and do not believe that they will ever be in a position to own their own home. Well, on this side of the chamber we must always be for freedom, for private property, for property rights that currently are trampled on by both state government and local governments, and my argument – in particular to my colleagues – is that there is a way forward here for the Liberal Party that is entirely consistent with Liberal values and that ultimately will pay a great political dividend.

Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:19): I move:

That debate on this motion be adjourned until the next day of meeting.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned until next day of meeting.