Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Legal and Social Issues Committee

Inquiry into the Rental and Housing Affordability Crisis in Victoria

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (17:44): I rise to speak on the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee’s report into rental and housing affordability in Victoria, and I thank the members of the committee, led by the very capable chair Trung Luu. I also want to thank my colleagues Mr McCracken and Dr Bach, who were also on this inquiry, the other members on the inquiry and the committee secretariat.

Anyone who speaks to those doing it tough out there in all of our electorates knows young people in particular looking to rent, young families looking to rent, are doing it tough, and rental availability itself is quite scarce. As the report states, 44 per cent of Victorian households with a mortgage during 2022 were experiencing mortgage stress and rents increased by 15.3 per cent in 2022 alone. One of the more chilling but unfortunately not surprising findings of the inquiry was that home ownership is declining, starting later in life and becoming concentrated into a few hands. The finding that the cost of renting in Victoria is causing significant financial and social stress should come as no surprise.

I spoke in my maiden speech quite a bit about housing, but one of the particular things I am concerned about is people are not having that financial security to settle down and are buying houses much later in life. We know when they settle down and start a family they do not really do that until they have that financial security behind them. I think our housing crisis is having an impact on our birthrate in Victoria, because we have the lowest birthrate in Australia at 1.48 children per woman. I think the two are related and we need to make sure we get as many people into homes as possible for that reason, because we have a growing share of people going towards their retirement age and a diminishing share of taxpayers to pay for the care of those people.

There are some noteworthy recommendations. As the Shadow Minister for Home Ownership and Housing Affordability this report has been very valuable for me to have a deep dive into. Recommendation 5, which I particularly like, is:

That the Victorian Government establish an online public portal showing the status of all planning applications across the State, from application through to approval, construction and occupation.

I think this is a great idea. I would also like to see that implemented at a council level. I reckon Darebin City Council and its ALP mayor would top that planning delay portal, closely followed by probably the City of Yarra.

Recommendation 20 is that the Victorian government discontinue its first home owner grant and transfer the funding to the private rental assistance scheme. That would help those doing it tough, so that is a noteworthy recommendation. Another recommendation is:

That the Victorian Government amend Section 32 of the Subdivision Act 1988 replacing ‘unanimous resolution’ with ‘special resolution’.

It is often close to impossible to regenerate older buildings, both residential and commercial, to increase supply. We need to improve planning processing times – that was one of the recommendations – and clear the backlog of planning approvals currently under consideration. The minister likes to complain about local government, but we know a lot of the planning approval backlog stems from her ministerial desk, so we need to clear that up.

I was pleased to see contributions from people I am a really big fan of. Peter Tulip from the Centre for Independent Studies said that, as a general rule of thumb, for every extra percentage increase in supply the cost of housing reduces by about 2.5 per cent. We saw the Grattan Institute in there. We saw contributions from my friends at YIMBY Melbourne on a discussion around housing targets and finding that Melbourne missing middle. I am very interested in what they had to say. We need to find real solutions to the housing crisis. I am very glad to have read this report and will take it under consideration going forward towards 2026.