Tuesday, 2 August 2022

Social and affordable housing

Mr RIORDAN (Polwarth) (17:31): I rise to grieve today about the parlous state of homelessness and housing affordability in this great state of Victoria. This government talks about its big builds, it talks about its compassion, it talks about all these wonderful values, but it is in fact all talk. We do not have to go very far to look at this government’s track record on looking after the most vulnerable, the most needy, those who most need the state’s support. We are not talking about their members of Parliament who have got their fists in the trough all day every day, taking stamps, taking cash payments and paying for red T-shirts. No, we are talking about using taxpayers money for the benefit of those most in need in our community.

I refer to just the basic statistics. When this government took control back in 2014 there were 9990 people waiting for priority housing in this state. That is not a figure that most people would be happy with, and in fact in a modern, progressive society we would like to see that figure continue to go down. But after eight years of Labor, billions and billions and billions wasted and spent on overblown projects and on tunnels that have yet to materialise—I think one of the main tunnels has not even started to be dug yet—millions to developer friends and scandals galore about what they are doing with taxpayers money, where are the most vulnerable, where are the homeless, where are the people that need somewhere safe to stay at night? That list has increased 205 per cent in eight years. There are now 30 500 people just on the urgent priority list. We are not talking about the total list of homeless, because that is 54 000 people—up enormously.

This government talks big and acts so little because it is very, very obsessed with itself. It is obsessed with making sure it is covering up. It is spending millions of dollars going to the High Court to stop us here in the state understanding what they are doing with our money. Meanwhile people continue to be homeless. In these eight years we have gone on a waiting list. The average person needing urgent public housing is waiting 16 months. That is the best part of a year and a half spent waiting just to find somewhere to put their head down at night, and that does not include people who are in completely inadequate housing that needs to be upgraded or disabled or disadvantaged people that need housing. That is this list, and it is out of control.

This government claims to be wanting to spend $5.5 billion on a big build, and they talk big about providing more public housing, but let us look at the facts of that. When they finish spending another $5.5 billion of taxpayers money in a fairly unaccountable way—we will talk about that a little bit later—there is still not going to be the amount of houses available for the most needy and the most vulnerable in this state as there was in 2014. Imagine that—eight years in government and a list that has blown out beyond any recognition of what it was only eight years ago. You have spent $5.5 billion and you are still worse off. You have got to ask questions. Victorians are asking questions. The welfare sector is asking questions, and most certainly those trying to put people into a safe, affordable and accessible home every night of the week are asking the question of this government, ‘What are you doing?’.

I will just put on the record my own area—the Geelong-Ballarat-Warrnambool area—and its housing lists. I mean, in the Warrnambool area, which covers my hometown of Colac, there is a 2816 per cent increase in people looking for urgent housing. These are not people who want to upgrade their home and have a nicer home. These are people that do not actually have a home—a 2800 per cent increase. And this is under a government that is telling everybody it is spending money on housing. In Horsham there is a 403 per cent increase, in Ballarat a 649 per cent increase and in the Geelong region 618 per cent. The member for South Barwon is there. He has clearly been asleep in his own home, not thinking about the people in his own community nor those right across the Barwon and south-west region. There are literally 1475 more people desperately looking for a home under the watch of Labor just in Geelong alone in the last eight years.

So, what other statistics do we have here? We see that this problem is not a COVID problem. It is not a one-off problem. It is not from some recent event, it is an annual, ongoing problem. Just in the most recent figures, again, this government at the moment is running at basically putting another 400 people a quarter out of a home—less accessible. It is averaging around 358 people—or actually, registered people, so that can be families. That figure could actually be multiple; it could be many, many hundreds more than that. It is just a family registration, so if you are a young, single mum with a couple of kids, that is two extra people. We are averaging 358 a quarter finding themselves without assistance from this government.

Recently in other reports put out—and the government, surprisingly, has not yet doctored this information so that it is not available to the public—on the priority housing list, just to give you an idea of how dramatically it is increasing, in March 2021, for the most urgent people in the community, it was 32 079. Remember that when the Liberals were last in, in 2014, they inherited a list of only 9990. By March 2021 it was 32 079, and by March 2022, only a couple of months ago, the list was 36 237 people who do not have somewhere to call home—who are waiting endlessly, month after month, in some cases year after year, for somewhere safe to live. That is just the list of people with nowhere. There are people currently in public housing that is inadequate: it is not safe; it is not appropriate; it is not fit for purpose; it may not be disability friendly. There are a range of reasons why people are desperate to have their public housing upgraded, and when you add those poor people to the list, you are at 64 000 people—not people but families—that this government has no plan for, because their $5 billion spend just keeps us where we are. It does not add anything new to the system.

We have seen in recent times the breakdown of people that are on this waiting list—the government is trying to record that. They are keeping people busy recording; perhaps they could send some of those people out to actually make some new homes. We have got, for example, just between March 2021 and March 2022 another 1000 people in emergency management. These are the most critical and most vulnerable people. In the last 12 months there have been an extra 1000 people in that category. We have got people needing housing for special needs—an extra 790 of those. I mean, that brings us to a total of just under 7000 people needing specialist housing assistance, and this government has no option for them.

We move to just some of the demographic types that this government is failing abysmally to provide any sort of future and support for. Single parents—you cannot get a more vulnerable cohort in society than a young mum with a couple of kids, desperate. I know in my own town I have regularly got people who are perhaps in one bedroom, and they have got two little children and have to make ends meet and make a home. From March 2021 to March 2022 the number of single parents was 12 200. It is now at 13 419. That is just the family household. So if it was a young parent with two children, it could be three times that figure. That is a figure of probably 30 000 people without a home and in desperate and priority need for it.

The other one that of course breaks most people’s hearts—it is the fastest growing demographic that this government is not providing a home for—is our elderly single people. These are people who have got to a period in life when they can no longer work and provide an income for themselves in a regular way. It may be people who have found themselves through no fault of their own single and without a home. That cohort of people just in the last 12 months has increased by 732. There are now over 10 300 elderly single people that this government is providing no hope and no opportunity for. Quite frankly they have been utterly asleep at the wheel in providing this most essential service to the Victorian community.

I received an email over the weekend—actually from someone who is a similar age to me—from a single woman who lives in my electorate who has lived her whole life in the township of Lorne. She has had good ongoing employment. She has had a house to live in. There is no rental accommodation for people who live and work in many of my coastal communities, for example. This woman wrote to me that she now finds herself living in a caravan out the back of her sister’s farm many, many kilometres from where her regular employment was. She cannot get a home in the town that she was born and bred in and has worked in all her life, and there is nothing that this government can do to help her. There is no accommodation. There are no plans. There are no opportunities for her to have access to a safe, affordable and accessible home, which she is certainly entitled to.

And it is not just me raising these concerns. I have here from just the last month numerous articles from the Warrnambool Standard, the Geelong Advertiser, the Ballarat Courier, the Colac Herald—endless publications across my electorate—talking about some of the appalling statistics that this government has overseen in its eight years. We have got, for example, in the Geelong region only 9.7 per cent of the houses available for rent considered affordable. How does one of our major regional communities provide for its most vulnerable and its most needy when less than 10 per cent of the houses available are considered affordable? That is just not good enough. It means that this government has been asleep at the wheel.

Then of course early last month the Ombudsman, Deborah Glass, presented a report. It is not pretty reading. It is distressing reading. The Ombudsman came out and talked about the complete mismanagement of these public assets. The 60 000-odd homes that the Victorian government oversees should be an absolute priority—not red shirts, not millions of dollars to defend the Labor Party’s actions in the High Court, not millions of dollars taken to prop up dodgy marketing and Labor Party activities in electorate offices. Money should not be spent on that, but it should be spent on keeping people’s homes as homes. The Ombudsman receives two complaints a day—over 700 complaints a year. I just table here the increasing rate of complaints to the Ombudsman about the condition and the manner in which this government maintains its properties. We have had a lot of legislation go through this Parliament in recent years about the need for landlords to be responsible—to provide safe housing, to maintain it properly—and yet this government leads by disaster, not by example. It leads by disaster. In 2016 there were 598 complaints; the next year, 641; then 760, 822, 855 and 899. It is off the charts. I mean, the people in public housing are being shown no respect. There is no courtesy, there is no follow-up and in fact the 17 recommendations from the Ombudsman talk about this government’s inability to properly manage the assets that it has in the best interests of Victorians and the most vulnerable Victorians. They have done a terrible job.

Finally, in the minute that we have left, let us talk about the other element: this government talks about the revitalisation and the reinvestment in public housing. Well, let us talk about that. There are a couple of properties, for example, in Northcote, North Melbourne and Preston. There have been some very, very cosy deals done there by this government with developers. I see online today that one former public housing estate now has private units for sale between $500 000 and $3 million—151 units on one site being sold off to the private sector. But guess what? This government has not revealed to the Parliament and it has not revealed to the people what the Victorian taxpayer, what the homeless and what the people needing public housing have got out of that deal. Just on a short add-up there, it is potentially—

Ms Thomas: More public housing.

Mr RIORDAN: No, they have not. They have not got more public housing, because sadly there is less public housing after $5.5 billion than there was when the Liberals were here in 2014. We have gone backwards—and it is not me saying that, it is the Ombudsman. The Ombudsman uses the word: public housing provision has ‘stagnated’. It has absolutely stagnated in this state. I grieve for the homeless in Victoria.