Thursday, 3 April 2025

Ministers statements: housing

Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for the Suburban Rail Loop, Minister for Housing and Building, Minister for Development Victoria and Precincts) (12:06): I rise today to commend our federal colleagues on an excellent budget which will deliver cost-of-living relief to millions of Victorians. The budget includes $800 million to expand the Help to Buy scheme, which we have been discussing here today, as well as $54 million to support prefabricated and modular home construction. Of course funding was provided to support the Housing Australia Future Fund, and that is a program that is delivering 20,000 new social homes and 20,000 new affordable homes right across the country. That is the perfect complement to our $6.3 billion Big Housing Build and Regional Housing Fund, which has seen over 10,100 homes either completed or underway. Together these initiatives are helping to deliver more homes for more Victorians right across the state. In fact we saw yesterday that over the 12 months to the end of February 2025 Victoria has had 56,000 residential building approvals – that is 19,800 more than Queensland and 10,900 more than New South Wales. There is much more to do, but the action that we are taking is helping to move the needle in the right direction.

But there is a former property investor on the other side of the federal Parliament who wants to unravel this important work, and I quote him directly:

We will stop the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund …

That is a fund that represents 40,000 new social and affordable homes for vulnerable families across our country. That is all coming under the knife if the federal Leader of the Opposition gets his hands on it. I am showcasing that work in this place because these cuts will have real impacts on everyday Victorians, impacting people currently on the social housing waitlist looking for the safety and security of a roof over their heads. It will impact early-career health workers, junior teachers and hospitality workers, who will be priced out of our inner-city suburbs. And it will impact renters, because we know that fewer homes equals higher prices. It is not just those opposite and their federal mates who oppose our plan; as I said at the Community Housing Industry Association conference this week, there are certain loud voices in our media landscape spreading disinformation as well about community housing. They need to do better.