Matter of Public Importance - Housing Policy

MATTER OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

‘HOUSING POLICY’.

Wednesday, 13 November 2024.

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (16:16):

The Government has brought a Matter of Public Importance to this House today on perhaps their biggest policy failure as a Government, other than of course their perhaps criminal economic vandalism through the life of their Government. But it is in the lack of capacity in providing homes to the community where they have failed so badly. And they have done it today – today of all days – a day when Victorians have been seen to vote against this Government. We have seen it. We have seen it in polling today. The ‘runner-up Premier’, the polls say today.

The Premier has now become the runner-up leader of this Parliament, and when it comes to policy and when it comes to housing, we know why, because the housing policies the Premier has announced – she has staked her leadership on it in recent weeks – are the great reset. The Premier took a great reset by announcing, ‘Throw it all in on policy.’ And it has been proven to be a scam – a total scam. Do you know why? Because the policy on housing is about one thing: the Premier’s population growth.

The Premier keeps saying, ‘We’re going to double the size of this city to at least the size of London.’ Has anybody ever asked a Victorian whether they want to see Melbourne at least double to the size of London? Nobody has been asked. There is no mandate, so this hollow set of policy announcements is nothing more than a fraud, a scam. The Premier talks about building housing for people’s children, but it is about housing new population growth – that is what this policy is about – and in doing so turning Melbourne into a mega city. Did anyone ask this State whether they want a mega city? Did anyone ask? No, of course they did not. The Premier has swanned around, driven into Melbourne from Bendigo – from 150 kilometres away – to make her announcements, and those announcements will wreck this city. Melburnians know it; of course they know it. You have got a Premier who lives 150 kilometres away, who swans on into town and says, ‘I’ve got a series of policies that are going to wreck your suburbs.’ Is there any wonder that all around the city you are starting to see big groups of people come together and rise up and say, ‘We don’t want our city wrecked. We don’t want to see the liveability of our State destroyed.’ We were the most liveable city in the world, and now the Government has a plan to wreck it by turning certain suburbs into mega suburbs.

The Premier likes to play political games and pick the suburbs she does not like. Of course that is what has happened. We all know what has happened. The Premier cannot even see these suburbs with a pair of binoculars from where she lives. She could not even see the city with a pair of binoculars and has picked suburbs she does not like and said, ‘You know what, we’re going to wreck them.’ These are established, long-term suburbs where the community has spent hundreds of years, built these beautiful suburbs around them, and the Premier has said, ‘We’re going to put big skyscrapers in them, and you know what, community, you have to suck it up.’ That is what this policy is: a scam to fit the population growth that the Labor Government has targeted, both State and Federal, into our suburbs.

What has happened as a result? Victorians have turned on the Premier. I am 100 per cent sure that when the Premier said, ‘We’re going to put everything into this announcement,’ it was to do one thing: to turn around the polls. I do not think the Premier has any goal in her mind other than trying to turn the polls around for herself, so that is what these policy announcements were about. Today the Premier woke up with the faint hope that there would be some glimmer that the Premier’s reset, her big policy announcements, would pay a dividend, and Victorians have said no. Not only have they said no; they have made the Premier the runner-up. How embarrassing for the Premier. You can feel it in this Chamber, and you can feel it as you move around this building. The other side of the chamber know it. They are now looking at the boss and saying, ‘Oh no, something is wrong here,’ and there is something wrong. The Premier does not get Melbourne. That is the problem – the Premier does not get Melbourne, and that is what you can see in these policy announcements.

These policy announcements were an attack on the city. There is no other way to see it. The Premier will say, ‘If you stand up against what we are announcing, somehow there is something wrong with you.’ I have said it before, and I will say it again: I would rather stand up and protect my community than be the Premier who wrecks it. That is what this Premier is doing. She has already announced that she will allow the wrecking of 25 suburbs through her major activity centre announcement, and the Coalition has said strongly that where the community does not want it of course it should not be forced upon them. There are some communities that do, and they absolutely should be welcome to it. But when you see inappropriate skyscrapers being forced on communities that have none, purely because the Premier does not like the suburb, seriously, is there any wonder that Victorians have turned on the Premier?

We have been called a number of times recently into communities by community-led groups who have organised forums about what is being proposed in their area. This is not the Liberal Party organising opposition to the Government’s announcements. These are groups in Box Hill, Niddrie and Essendon where the communities have turned out in their hundreds to say, ‘What is this Government doing?’ What I have said to those communities is that, firstly, your local Member has not stood up for you. In fact, your local Members are gaslighting you, because they are saying in this Chamber, ‘You want what the Government is foisting upon you,’ which is just not true. The Members are gaslighting their communities and coming into this Chamber and saying it is supported. We know it is not supported, because it is inappropriate. When the Government talks about housing and community support, we know that is not true, and there are a number of other community events in coming weeks.

I know that in my own community on Sunday there will be a community walk. It will be a very big community walk, I suspect. But that community walk is not just people from Bayside. There are people from the Deputy Premier’s community who are coming across, there are people from Box Hill, there are people from all over Melbourne who are coming to say, ‘You know what? We cannot have a Government who is attacking our communities.’ That is what is at the core of the Premier’s announcement.

What is going to become more clear to Victorians is that it is not just an attack, it is an attack based on a scam, because this is solely about population growth – nothing more. But the Premier has not asked Victorians if they support that growth; no-one has. Do we want to be the size of London? Has anyone asked? Of course they have not, and the Premier certainly does not have a mandate for it. So, what you will see is Victorians continuing to turn against the Government. Their Members have not worked it out yet. They have not fully worked it out. You could see when the polls came in that something was not quite right, but they are always behind the curve. They have not yet worked out that Victorians have turned on the government, but even more so they have turned on the Premier. They have turned on the Premier. They do not trust the Premier. That is why the Premier is a runner-up. The Premier is a runner-up. To think – and how embarrassing – the Premier put everything into the housing announcement. It was going to be the great white hope, the saviour, of this Premier’s premiership. It was going to be the saving of the Premier’s premiership. Yet what happened? It sank like a stone. That is because Victorians have figured out two things: number one, the housing policy is based on a scam – it is all about population growth; and secondly, it is an attack on Melbourne from a Premier who lives 150 kilometres away.

Though we do not talk about it – and the Government certainly has stopped talking about it – this follows the commitment by the former Premier to building 80,000 homes a year. I will tell you how incompetent the Labor government is. Since announcing the commitment to building 80,000 homes, the number of homes built this year will go down on the previous year. Only a Labor Government could announce an increase in home builds and actually cause it to go down. You have to be a special kind of stupid to get it to go down. The former Premier announced the commitment to building 80,000 homes, and we will see it go down. That is why Victorians have no confidence in the Premier’s plan. That is why industry has no confidence in the Premier’s plan. What is terribly sad – and the Coalition has and will have policies in this space and knows very well – is we do not want to see this industry fail, we want to see it succeed. What we know is as a result of a former Minister for Planning we saw the highest number of builds in this State’s history – the highest. So set aside all the words; the highest number of builds we have seen in this State’s history was because of former Planning Minister Matthew Guy. That is a fact.

Matthew Guy interjected.

James NEWBURY: He is a legend, he says. It is a fact, so we have credibility in terms of supplying housing.

Housing Minister Wynne – I mean, seriously, that guy slept. He was the Joe Biden of this Parliament – good old sleepy Richard.

This Government has monumentally failed on housing. There is no question that this Government has failed on housing in terms of the former Premier’s commitment, the commitment he made on the way out to try and show that he stood for something. His commitment – what a failure that has been. Housing has gone down. And now it is the Premier who has thrown everything into her housing commitments. Victorians have worked it out. It is based on a scam – this is about population growth. But nobody has been asked if we want to be a city the size of London, and the Premier certainly does not have a mandate. Secondly, it is an attack on suburbs the Premier does not like from 150 kilometres away. The Premier does not even have to live in the city she is wrecking. By the time it is wrecked, she is going to be out on a pension, one of the very few out on a pension – what a disgrace that is – having wrecked this city. This Premier has failed.