Thursday, 20 February 2025

Motions

Housing

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) (16:56): I rise to move my motion, the first time I have done this since being elected. I am particularly pleased that this is happening on such an important issue as this: Motion 651, of which I gave notice on 17 October 2024. I move:

That this house:

(1) condemns the Liberal and Nationals coalition for their:

(a) consistent efforts to undermine and oppose social housing developments in Victoria;

(b) disregard shown to the wellbeing and dignity of their most vulnerable constituents;

(2) notes that in:

(a) 2017, the member for Brighton opposed a development in Hampton, building 207 new apartments;

(b) 2021, the member for Sandringham opposed a proposal to build 1,048 apartments in Highett; and

(c) 2022, the former Liberal Minister for Housing believed low-income families had no place in the member for Brighton’s electorate as they would not have the latest sneakers or iPhones.

That, as you know, is the motion. I move this for this very serious reason: I move that the house formally condemns the Liberal and National coalition for their consistent and deliberate efforts to undermine and oppose social housing developments in Victoria, because housing is a human right and the coalition just do not get it. Their behaviour is unfortunately nothing new at all for most Victorians, given the record of the Liberal and National parties when it comes to housing in recent decades has been horrific. Nobody can be surprised about their policies, because they are non-existent. It has been less concerned with helping those who need a roof over their heads and more concerned with protecting their own backyard. It stands in stark contrast to the conservative movements of international friends and allies, particularly in Canada and the leader of the conservatives, Pierre Poilievre, and across the Tasman with our friends in New Zealand and the national conservative-minded government there. The so-called NIMBY movement, which stands for ‘not in my backyard’ – or as those opposite on that side of the chamber would call it, ‘not in my Brighton’ – has found a natural political home right here in the Victorian Liberal Party. The mantra has found a natural political home in the Liberal Party, where the prevailing ideology is not about helping first home buyers but locking them out.

In thinking about this motion today, there is a particular quote I hope you can indulge me saying, and I think it is important that the quote is from a former member in this place and a former member across the other side:

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 …

You may be wondering who made that quote. Well, you may recall that quote was from the good Dr Bach – the much missed and eloquent contributor to the North-East Metropolitan Region, a man who had a real grasp on social issues and the issues that matter to the people of the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region: housing, jobs, education, which he cared about a lot as a former teacher and doctor and, who I might add, availed himself of briefings from our ministers, unlike others. We do miss the good Dr Bach’s contributions in his role as Shadow Minister for Education, and he said it more than a year ago now, on 2 November 2023, in this very place. While you have seen big movement on this front on our behalf, there has been no movement on it from the other side.

While the good Dr Bach used to speak positively of housing, this do-nothing, know-nothing opposition runs away from it at every turn. The gig is up. The Liberals’ friends in the Murdoch media exposed the racket for what it is – a racket.

… housing towers in Brighton, Toorak, Malvern, Armadale and Hawksburn is going to ruin Melbourne …

says Steve Price from the Herald Sun. These suburbs in my community of Southern Metro, Mr Price argues, do not want more housing and that it would ruin the character of the community, it would ruin the shape. Well, I could not disagree more, and let me tell you why.

For some in Brighton, Toorak, Malvern, Armadale and Hawksburn, the suburbs Mr Price has singled out, housing affordability is out of reach, even for those who grew up in those homes. You grow up knowing one community – I know for me that community was Glenroy and Coburg – and you feel at home there. Your parents live there in your childhood home, Nan and Pop live around the corner just a few minutes drive away, you know the quickest path through the side streets to get to the shops and you feel like you are the only one of your university or work mates lucky enough to know where the best coffee or doughnuts are in Melbourne. But then what happens? You enter the real world and enter housing market, and you can no longer live anywhere near your family – it is just too out of reach, too expensive. I know; I had that experience. I know many families across Victoria are experiencing that currently. You hear a lot in this place about aspiration – the aspirational class and people’s aspirations for a better life in this next battle, the future and all of it – the Australian dream and the Victorian dream. As the Premier said back in November, it is the fight of her life, and it is the fight of all our lives. We must make it manageable for families to stay together and get back into the housing market.

The disrespect with which this debate is happening has been shameful and wrong. Many in this chamber would remember the time a member for Northern Victoria weighed in on the debate about social housing. Do you remember what was said? That it was somewhat inappropriate for a low-income family to move into Brighton –’Not in my Brighton, not in my Bayside’. Her principal objection to building social housing in the area was the prospect that low-income, welfare-dependent families would have to attend the same schools as other kids with different sneakers and iPhones. That was from a former Liberal housing minister. I am not sure why the Liberals would have a housing minister if they do not want to build housing.

Four years of failure, four dark years from 2010 to 2014 – years of incompetence and paralysis when the coalition let social and affordable housing take a back seat and went to work carving up Melbourne for unrestricted development with no consideration for the future. I think many of us would remember the time when the planning minister in the other place, the member for Bulleen, earned himself the nickname ‘Mr Skyscraper’. We actually have a plan. He had a knack of letting private developers rip without any plan, with no infrastructure ready, no schools, no hospitals and most importantly no plan for families. To this day they still take any and every opportunity to make sure that working people can never get a leg up.

In November the Premier made a bold new announcement to establish 25 new activity centres across Melbourne. These activity centres will help build more homes where Victorians need them, around public transport hubs like train stations, shops, doctors and chemists. In my community of Southern Metro it is a fact that more young people are looking to move further and further away from their home because it is becoming simply unaffordable for the average student who is juggling university with casual jobs to afford rising rents. Suburbs like Brighton are simply unaffordable. That is why the Allan Labor government is investing in housing and investing in the future of young people.

Housing supply is critical to making sure that we are addressing rising rents. It is possibly the most basic economic lesson you can give: the fundamental laws of supply and demand. Though for some, the rationale of the market economy is not strong enough to counter the Liberal Party’s NIMBY tendencies. When the Premier announced the new activity centres, the party once again showed their true colours. The member for Brighton in the other place doubled down and rocked up with an armada to protest new housing in true Liberal fashion. The photos are a treat, and I would encourage you to have a look at them if you have not already done so by now. At some point between Robert Menzies’ reign and the modern day, the Liberal Party transformed itself from a libertarian party to a conservative party. They are less concerned with empowering ordinary Australians, first home buyers and renters and more concerned about their own backyard. Stopping ordinary people moving in down the street has taken a higher priority in the minds of Liberals like the member for Brighton. It is a pattern of behaviour. In 2017, when a proposal suggested 207 apartments in Hampton, the member for Brighton folded his arms and opposed it. Similarly the neighbouring member for Sandringham decided to oppose the proposal for over 1000 apartments – 1048 to be exact – locking out hundreds and maybe thousands of young professionals, parents, families and students from living in a beautiful suburb like Sandringham.

That is not to mention the fact that the lack of housing supply means that when younger people do want or need to move out of their parents’ house they will not even be able to buy or rent a place nearby. The prospect of young people being able to actually live in the places where they grew up frightens those opposite, because it is not about helping first home buyers to them. It is not about making sure there are enough homes and apartments available for renters to stay in. They want to freeze time and let the world pass them by with no concern for where these renters and prospective home owners will go. Kicking the can down the road – or out of your backyard – does not fix the problem. Ultimately, forcing Melbourne to sprawl into the suburbs for ever and ever will cause trouble in the inner city too with time, as congestion builds up and there is more pressure on our inner suburbs.

To make sure there are enough homes to house our growing population we have to build homes where it just makes sense, and that includes at train stations. Building more homes around train stations takes pressure off our roads, which means people get to work faster, and also reduces our carbon emissions. The Allan Labor government is working hard to make sure that young people can have a future in our city. Melbourne is projected to have the same population as London has today in around 25 years, and if one were to visit London they would see they have several apartment complexes with higher density built around train stations because that is the smart thing to do. That is how you build a city, instead of building out, and how you keep pressure off the roads while reaping the benefits of a growing community.

I understand that wanting Victoria’s economy to be more dynamic, prosperous and diverse may not be the first instinct or inclination for the Liberals. After all, in the past 30-odd years they have had two governments of their own and left their own stain on this state. The last Liberal government managed to cobble together a dysfunctional team, one that mass-approved skyscrapers with the plan to deal with the population crunch. One of the members, the member for northern Victoria, sat in the housing driver’s seat while opposing social housing development in Brighton because of kids owning iPhones. Before that, the coalition unleashed the mania that was the Kennett Liberal Party.

Nothing reflects the contempt the Liberal and National parties have for young people like closing over 300 public schools. Whole families were destroyed. Parents were sacked and students were thrown out of their schools and disrupted from learning. They do not do, they block; but we do.

We heard in October the Leader of the Opposition said on Raf Epstein that there is nothing there and we have not dealt with the issues blocking houses from being built. What does that even mean? That is what we are doing. He said they would have a different approach and that we should scrap the activity centres because you cannot put them in established areas. What does that mean? If they do not want to put them there, where do they want to put them? They are not experts in building homes; they are experts in blocking them.

It is entirely hypocritical of the coalition to talk about housing when there is no other political party in the room that has worked harder to stop the construction of higher-density housing in their respective electorates. It is also why they would never be able to deal with the housing market pressures if elected. They are just not leaders in any regard. The Liberal Party would not even attempt to lead the state and bring constituents along with them. They would try to keep things as they are, twiddling their thumbs in the hope that things would magically get better.

The Australian market is at a structural disadvantage compared to other OECD advanced economies on housing market metrics. For instance, a parliamentary research paper from New South Wales found that the elasticity of the Australian housing market was at 0.5. That is considered intermediate and far below peers like the United States, which has an elasticity of 2.0, or four times our levels, or Sweden at 1.4. Why is this important? I want to quote from the report:

The elasticity of supply is a measure of the responsiveness of housing supply to an increase in demand or house prices. Technically, this covers both the supply of new-build housing and the supply which occurs from within the established dwelling stock. However, the latter is difficult to observe and has not been subject to much previous research. Housing supply elasticity has therefore become synonymous with new housing supply. It is defined as the percentage change in housing stock that arises due to a 1% change in price. For instance, suppose a rise in demand for housing increases house prices by 1%. If housing supply elasticity is 0.62, it can be expected that the housing supply will expand by 0.62% in response to this 1% increase in price.

Thank you to professor of economics Rachel Ong ViforJ and professor of property and housing economics Chris Leishman for their work in this space. As you can see, if there is an elasticity level greater than one, it means that the price increase in the market because of proportionality is larger and it will increase in stock. But it is not clear that this happens in Australia or Victoria. That is where the government comes in, and the Allan Labor government is committed to filling this gap. The basic law is that for housing stock per capita to increase over time, new homes need to be completed at a rate that surpasses population growth. Unfortunately, Australia is below the OECD average on dwellings per 10,000 people, with Italy the highest at 600. Australia is above 400, and the OECD average is just 450. Yet despite all of that, recent ABS data showed Victoria was number one in the country for home approvals, home construction starts and home construction completions. So we are at a structural disadvantage as a country, but as usual, Victoria is punching above its weight, doing more. We are delivering more social and affordable homes, and that means the SRL, which is not only Australia’s largest infrastructure project in history but Australia’s largest housing project.

But we know we need to do more. Now we are building more homes a year as a percentage of the current housing stock than the OECD average, but we also growing faster. So the question of how we grow that stock is a big deal and a big question. We are building more homes than any other state. That means more than 60,000 home completions over the last 12 months, nearly 15,000 more homes than New South Wales, and I can only imagine how many more it would be over in South Australia, the state the Victorian Liberals so desperately want us to copy and be like. The numbers could not be starker. ABS data released shows Victoria built 60,606 homes over the year, a 7.5 per cent increase year on year, while New South Wales built 46,573 homes, a 3.9 per cent decline year on year.

If it were up to the Victorian coalition we would have achieved nothing like this. They would have just blocked and blocked and continued to block. How are we going to achieve this? The more homes bill is a game changer and will slash stamp duty on eligible homes, off-the-plan apartments, units and townhouses. This 12-month concession will cut up-front costs for getting a home, making it more affordable for Victorians. This will boost construction, and the concessions will affect across the state, fighting the housing crisis. The concession provides a deduction, and a big one, of 100 per cent of construction and refurb costs when determining how much stamp duty is payable.

While $348.8 million was cut from the social housing fund by the Liberal–National coalition in the 2011–12 budget, we are doing the opposite. While they cut another $1.8 million from housing assistance and support programs a year later, we are doing the opposite. While they cut another $13.1 million from housing assistance and support programs the year after that – three years in a row – we are doing the opposite. To sum up the last Liberal government, four years of cuts. They cut another 210 homes from the social housing acquisition program in the Liberal–National coalition’s last budget in 2014–15.

Well done to everyone who was involved in crafting this bill. I encourage my community in Southern Metro to look into this plan if they have not already done so to see what we are doing. Our plan has also included approving big projects that Victorians want right near the places where Victorians want to live, which includes my beautiful community of Southern Metro. At the end of 2024 we approved three residential buildings in Docklands. That means almost 1000 homes added on the waterfront. There are 915 new homes to be built in new buildings at Collins Wharf, nearly doubling the place. This half-a-billion-dollar project includes two 28-storey buildings and another 16-storey building.

As you know, the Allan Labor government is the only government that can deliver for our regions in Victoria. It was 25 years ago that much of regional Victoria turned red, and for good reason. It was lucky for us too, because part of that crop was our Premier, the member for Bendigo East. It is not just the cities that need more homes built, it is the regions as well. Our regions face a massive challenge of resources and getting tradies out to regional Victoria to build new homes, but that is what the Allan Labor government is doing. We are getting on with it. I am sure as a house we will have the opportunity to further discuss this bill at great length, but I will reiterate a few points. We introduced the Duties Amendment (More Homes) Bill in 2024, and as the then Treasurer made clear, it was a temporary measure to:

… encourage more off-the-plan purchases of apartments and townhouses by providing a land transfer duty benefit to purchasers, including investors, who are not eligible for existing off-the-plan concessions that are currently available for first home buyers and owner-occupiers.

As the motion signifies, the Liberal and National coalition have shown no regard for the wellbeing and dignity of their most vulnerable constituents. It is these sorts of bills that aim to do that, and by opposing them the coalition have shown themselves for what they truly are. It is the same for the short-stay levy. The bill was passed without amendment in this place on 17 October 2024 and later passed in the Legislative Assembly on 29 October. Thankfully, sounder heads prevailed, but it is this that shows what the coalition is about. When the coalition opposed the short-stay levy they were telling the most vulnerable in their communities that they will oppose homes being built in Victoria and that they are opposing Homes Victoria’s work in building and maintaining social and affordable housing across Victoria. Mr Welch claimed we vilify the outer suburbs and particularly called out ‘urban ghettos’ in his adjournment matter on 29 October 2024 when he was talking about social homes. He truly thinks Victorians in these communities live in ghettos. Has he ever ventured out of Yan Yean? Has he ever ventured out of McEwen? Does he even know that my community of Southern Metro includes many public housing towers and social and affordable housing in the electorates of Prahran and Albert Park in particular?

Democracy is about choice. Our side believes in social housing. The Leader of the Opposition does not and neither does his shadow cabinet. The last time they were in power they just cut, cut, cut. Let us not forget that in 2021 the then Leader of the Opposition jumped on the back of a ute in Hawthorn to oppose the social housing project the government is delivering in Bills Street. It is a housing project that I know very well, having had the honour to visit it with successive ministers for housing, first Minister Brooks in the other place and now of course Minister Shing in this place. While the then Leader of the Opposition tried to block those houses, we built them. He is a blocker, but we build things. The Bills Street, Hawthorn, development tenants have been moving in since 18 July last year. If the opposition had had their way not only would those homes not have been built but those jobs around them would not have existed. This development has provided 206 social and affordable homes and has created 890 jobs. I think that is just great.

Since November 2020 we have built more than 15,000 homes and are in the process of building them as part of the capital program right across the government. This includes the Big Housing Build, the Regional Housing Fund, ground lease model 1, the public housing renewal program and the Social Housing Growth Fund. That includes more than 10,000 homes which have been built or are on the way to being built as part of the Big Housing Build and more than 5000 households – that means families, friends and everyone in between – who have moved into or are almost ready to move into their brand-new homes. I have seen firsthand the difference a new home makes. In Bangs Street, just a few hundred metres away from my office, we are delivering some of the over 13,300 social and affordable homes that are part of the $6.3-billion Big Housing Build and Regional Housing Fund. Last year we announced the location of 1000 of them, a game changer for the communities where they are located. These new and refurbished homes include 700 public housing homes, making it easy to get a roof over your head. In regional Victoria over 3100 homes are complete or underway under Big Housing Build planning as well – underway to deliver more than 400 homes through the renewal of regional neighbourhoods like Delacombe in Ballarat, Benalla, Virginia Hill in Bendigo or Ormond Road in Geelong East.

But we have done more than that, and we are continuing to do more than that. We are currently delivering 1370 new homes across ground lease model sites at Essex Street in Prahran, Simmons Street in South Yarra, Barak Beacon in Port Melbourne and Bluff Road in Hampton East. I also visited Markham Avenue in Ashburton, near my good friend the member for Ashwood in the other place – he knows the value of social housing – along with Dunlop Avenue in Ascot Vale and Tarakan Street in Heidelberg West, which are all providing another 304 social homes and 204 affordable homes.

This side of the chamber is committed to delivering, and that is what this motion is all about. It is showing what those opposite are really about. There is our new building watchdog with teeth, to protect Victorians, directing builders to fix substandard work before, during and after settlement and the move-in date. It will help make homes more affordable, reducing the need for costly repairs and endless pain because of dodgy builders. There is the new land we unlocked in Kew, which is closer to transport, the amazing schools of Southern Metro and the parks that define our community. This will deliver more than 500 new homes in Kew, and I want to thank the former Minister for Precincts in the other place for his work on this. As part of our landmark, nation-leading and forward-thinking housing statement, at least 10 per cent of the dwellings on this site will be affordable homes.

We have a plan for affordable housing; the Liberals and Nationals do not. The Allan Labor government is going to deliver at least 9000 homes across 45 sites right across our state, and we will achieve this by having a plan and by unlocking and rezoning surplus government land. As the Minister for Precincts wisely said, ‘The status quo isn’t an option.’ We know that is true. We cannot go on like this. We need to make a change. We cannot allow those opposite to continue to say, ‘Not in my backyard’. We cannot allow those opposite to continue to say, ‘Not in my Brighton’. This is not a challenge that just some communities need to face; we are all in this together. Our plan for 50 activity centres across Melbourne is just that – in Broadmeadows, Camberwell, Chadstone, Epping, Frankston, Moorabbin, Niddrie, North Essendon, Preston and Ringwood.

Dr Stephen Glackin, an expert in urban planning from Swinburne University, has said he was taken aback by the scope of the overhaul – our boldness, our vision. That is what this side of the chamber it is about – that bold vision and doing what matters. As Dr Glackin correctly said, it is the right thing to do and it is the right thing for Melbourne. While the coalition continues to undermine homes being built in Victoria, I want all of my community of Southern Metro to know that it is the coalition’s fault and that they are the blockers and the ones not getting things done. The Allan Labor government are the builders. Do not just take our word for it – you can see the results. The community knows that we can build things. From the North East Link, to the Metro Tunnel, to the countless level crossing removals – so many that I have lost count – to the record numbers of schools and train stations under the leadership of Daniel Andrews and the Andrews Labor government and to the Allan Labor government’s bold plan to get millennials into homes, we are the only party that can get it done, and that is what we will do. By moving this motion today, the house will record and show that Labor governments are the only governments that are delivering for housing in Victoria.

I encourage the Greens to get behind this motion as well and put their vote where their values are. I commend the motion to the house.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (17:24): I will just quickly speak on Mr Berger’s motion. I have had in the bottom drawer for a long time. I am happy Mr Berger finally got a guernsey, because –

Renee Heath: On a point of order, Acting President, Mr McIntosh appears to be interjecting when he is not his spot, which is outside of the standing orders. I seek your guidance.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): You may seek guidance. I uphold the point of order – any interjection from your place, please.

Evan MULHOLLAND: I am happy for Mr Berger. He finally got a guernsey on this motion. It has been sitting in my bottom drawer, unlike Anthony Carbines’s very full bottom drawer, which is full of policies on bail. It has been sitting in my bottom drawer for a while because he keeps getting put at the bottom of the queue by the Labor Party – on that side. We heard a lot of conversation about housing in his electorate and in Prahran. Mr Berger obviously got rolled on that one as well. His Labor Party –

John Berger: On a point of order, Acting President, if Mr Mulholland is going to refer to my name, he should refer to it correctly. It is Berger.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): While technically that is not a point of order, it is about respect – a courtesy – so please, with a G.

Evan MULHOLLAND: Mr Berger obviously got rolled on that one, because his party did not actually have the guts to run a candidate in Prahran. They talk about how Labor is serving the community in Prahran – ‘We just don’t want to represent you.’ ‘We’re the Labor Party. We govern for all Victorians’ – he said it in his speech. No, they do not, because they do not stand a candidate in a seat like Prahran. A seat like Prahran is not worthy of the Labor Party running.

We have a fantastic incoming member for Prahran in Rachel Westaway, who will do a great job as the Liberal member for Prahran. Mr Berger could have run his good friend – what is the fellow’s name? His good friend John Kennedy could have switched over to Prahran. They could have run the campaign for John Kennedy in Prahran – they could have run anyone in Prahran – but they decided to turn their backs on that electorate.

Mr Berger, I did pick up one thing that you said, which was that there has been a big movement on your side towards housing. He might not have been here for the eight out of the 10 years of this government that Richard Wynne spent as their planning minister – opposing housing, putting height limits in places like Brunswick. Mr Berger also spoke fondly about places like Glenroy and Coburg.

A member interjected.

Evan MULHOLLAND: He did. I do; I represent them. Wouldn’t you know that the minister at the table, Mr Erdogan, was also a councillor representing places like Glenroy and Coburg. So was the member for Broadmeadows; Ms Kathleen Matthews-Ward was a councillor there. I know that those two members –

Tom McIntosh: On a point of order, Acting President, Mr Mulholland has clearly abandoned his YIMBY principles and the positions that he stood here and talked about in this chamber last year.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): That is not a point of order.

Evan MULHOLLAND: The then councillors Matthews-Ward and Erdogan did not always agree with each other at the time – I know Ms Matthews-Ward did not vote for Mr Erdogan as mayor; she got in a bit of trouble over it – but they were in absolute lockstep on opposing development in the City of Moreland. They were in lockstep. If anyone came up with sensible proposals like development in areas like Brunswick and Coburg, they were the first ones to oppose it. They were there with their placards. They were there in the council chambers.

Members interjecting.

Evan MULHOLLAND: Your colleagues were there in the council chambers opposing development.

Richard Welch: On a point of order, Acting President, there is some pointing going on across the chamber.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Jacinta Ermacora): The member will be heard with, if not silence, more respect, please.

Evan MULHOLLAND: Let us not forget it was this government that introduced the Planning and Environment Amendment (Recognising Objectors) Bill 2015, which made a significant impact, and still does to this day, in halting development across the state. You had the member for Carrum, who opposed a three-storey, 14-home development in Seaford as being inconsistent with neighbourhood character. You had the member for Frankston commenting on the bill, talking about protecting heritage and things being in line with the community. You had the member for Oakleigh talking about it. Of course he was successful in placing two-storey height limits in Carnegie, overturning our plan for an activity zone, only for an almost identical plan to re-emerge in the government’s housing statement. So do not lecture this side on blocking housing. Labor were the biggest blockers of all. Richard Wynne blocked development in the CBD. They are the ones that blocked development. We approved more housing in four years than Labor have in 10 – that is a statement of fact – and we actually built infrastructure before people moved in, not afterwards.

While we were approving homes, all of these people – Brian Tee, Richard Wynne, probably Mr Tarlamis and all of his mates – were in here talking about Matthew Guy blocking development, talking about ‘The Liberals approving too much development in our community.’ We know Ms Kilkenny does not like development in her community. We know the member for Frankston does not like development in his community. The member for Oakleigh does not like development in his community. They have all spoken about it. Ms Symes has even spoken in the chamber about overdevelopment under the Liberal Party. So do not give us a lecture – actually get on with it. You are all talk, and Mr Berger’s motion is all sledge, no action.

Lee TARLAMIS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:31): I move:

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

Motion agreed to.