Tuesday, 28 November 2023

Legal and Social Issues Committee

Inquiry into the Rental and Housing Affordability Crisis in Victoria

Trung LUU (Western Metropolitan) (13:00): Pursuant to standing order 23.22, I table the report of the inquiry into the rental and housing affordability crisis in Victoria, including an appendix, extracts of proceedings and a minority report, from the Legal and Social Issues Committee, and I present the transcripts of evidence. I move:

That the transcripts of evidence be tabled and the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

Trung LUU: I move:

That the Council take note of the report.

I am pleased to table this report into the rental and housing affordability crisis in Victoria. It is now widely accepted that Australia is experiencing a serious problem with housing. Barely a day goes by without a newspaper article or TV news story about Australians struggling to buy their own home or simply find a safe and secure place to rent. The state government has a role to play, but the solution to the problem we are facing requires a coordinated national approach involving all levels of society, both private sector and government. That is why the major recommendation in this report is this committee’s call for the renewing of long-term national housing policy, where the states, territories and Commonwealth cooperate to address our fundamental housing issues. The key question we face is this: do we want to be a nation of home owners or a nation of renters?

Many people want to rent. I think, for example, of young people enjoying the social benefits of sharing a house when they are starting their first job or seasonal workers following agricultural work across Victoria. However, the committee heard that more Victorians are renting not out of choice but out of necessity. Owning our own home is becoming increasingly out of reach for too many of us or just simply starting too late in life. We must take steps to increase supply and improve housing affordability so those who want to can own their own home. As people rent longer, their changed expectations are the main cause of the large backlog in rental disputes currently at VCAT. The committee welcomes the government announcement of a new rental dispute body, rental dispute resolution Victoria. We have made a broad recommendation regarding the new body – that is, that it be properly funded. It has a large job in front of it in clearing the VCAT backlog, and it must be done quickly.

As I stated, the problem with housing has been decades in the making, and it will also take decades to fix. The committee welcomes the recent housing statement, in particular the commitments to building 800,000 ‍homes in the next 10 years and improving the planning system. There are no silver bullets that would fix the housing crisis. Chapter 7 of this report identifies short-term, long-term and medium-term solutions. In the short term we recommend increasing supply through measures such as headleasing and more support to the build-to-rent sector. In the long term we recommend action in areas such as planning and increasing density in Melbourne’s missing middle.

An important long-term issue that remains unresolved is social housing. By the government’s own admission, it needs to build more social housing in Victoria. The committee has highlighted the priority of addressing the social housing waiting list for two reasons: (1) we need to take care of our vulnerable and (2) people who do not access social housing have to compete with those in the private rental market. Building more social housing will reduce demand in the private rental market.

In closing, in Victoria, as across Australia, we have spent too long watching the problems with housing grow while delaying taking action. The time to fix this problem is now, and the committee urge the Victorian government to respond to the recommendations in this report as quickly as possible.

On behalf of the committee I would like to thank everyone who made a submission to the inquiry and spoke with us at our public hearings. The committee relies on this evidence and your expertise to understand this complex area and the personal impacts housing policies have on all Victorians. I would also like to thank my fellow committee members for their hard work and cooperation throughout the inquiry. Finally, I would like to give a special thanks to the secretariat – Adeel Siddiqi, Sylvette Bassy, Julia Barnes, Caitlin Connally, Ben Huf and Patrick O’Brien – for their amazing support and assistance.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (13:06): As a member of the Legal and Social Issues Committee I rise to briefly make a contribution on this very important report. Obviously renting and the housing sector are in crisis, and I do not know that there is a more important public policy issue facing this state than trying to make policy initiatives that will make a difference to improve things for renters and for those seeking to own their own home. I want to thank all of those who contributed to the inquiry over its course. We heard too many stories from renters who are being poorly treated or who are enduring poorly maintained houses. In addition, I think, to a crisis of cost in the rental market we have got a crisis of quality in our rental supply, and we all need to work together to fix it. The report lays out some good recommendations for improvement. Home ownership and housing affordability must always remain a goal, and it is very important, I think, as we learned in the course of this information, that the government’s commitments to deliver more social housing must be delivered on, and that we need to stop the misinformation campaign that is out there about our social housing agenda that is causing too much distress for too many.

These are serious and complex policy issues. In the middle of this inquiry the government obviously announced an exceptionally significant housing statement, which was not released at the time the inquiry had started but was released by the time the inquiry had finished and which certainly had a significant bearing on the shape and the direction of matters. These are issues that need to be addressed as a Commonwealth, a state and a local issue. It is incredibly important. The self-referral from the committee probably did not leave us with enough time, I think, to get into these issues as much as we would have liked, but they are important and they must remain part of the ongoing policy debate.

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:07): I rise also as a member of the Legal and Social Issues Committee to contribute today and to acknowledge the significance of this moment of this report being tabled. It was a huge undertaking of work by a whole team of staff as well as my colleagues on the panel and a vast array of submitters from right across the community, but particularly I really do want to extend deep gratitude to the hundreds and hundreds of renters who submitted and took part both in writing and in live hearings as part of this inquiry process. Their stories were quite confronting, I think, particularly potentially to those on the committee who are not currently renting or are not in immediate contact with someone who rents right now in Victoria. Things are incredibly tough. People are putting off medication, they are putting off food, they are struggling to make ends meet, and some of the contributions that were made as part of this inquiry process really I think clarified for many the human cost, the human scale, of this crisis – and that is what it is; it is a crisis. It is so difficult to rent right now that we must do more. The government must adopt these recommendations that have been issued with this report as part of this inquiry. It is a bare minimum to adopt these recommendations. They must do that and then some. Further suggestions of what the government could do to tackle this crisis have been laid out by the Greens in our minority report as part of this process, but we must do more. We must ensure that renters in Victoria do not become second-class citizens to everyone else. Everyone deserves a safe and affordable roof over their head. You deserve to have the security of the home that you live in and to be near your work, your schooling and things you do in your everyday life. We must do more in Victoria.

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (13:09): I am happy to talk on the release of this report as well, also being a committee member. I would firstly like to acknowledge the staff that have put in quite a significant amount of time and effort. Although it might have been a relatively short inquiry, the work that they put in was quite substantial, so I do want to put that on record and acknowledge that and also acknowledge the work of every member of this place who had input, whether they were a participating member or whether they were indeed a full voting member on the inquiry. I think everyone, regardless of where we come from politically, wants to see the crisis resolved. It is just a matter of how that might be resolved, and we all have different views on that.

In terms of the report itself, there are things that are just true in this. Renters are clearly struggling, but I think we need to have a big focus on the supply side of the situation and ensuring that the private sector has the capacity to really make sure that they can get involved in the market so that they are not restricted from being engaged. Costs are a massive issue that we heard evidence on, and it is really quite astounding to see some of the statistics about where a lot of the supply is going across the country. I can tell you people are leaving Victoria. If they are a rental provider, they are leaving Victoria in droves because of the excess in regulation. That is just a sad fact. We saw that evidence given by a number of different people in the inquiry.

We also heard evidence from a lot of renters that the system is quite often complex and difficult to navigate and that if there are any resolutions that they need to seek because of an issue that they are having, it can be quite burdensome, and the fact is that VCAT has a massive backlog that is very, very difficult to deal with. That does not make things easier for renters and it does not make it easier for landlords when they are trying to seek a resolution on these matters, which should take less time than it currently does. That is a real fault in the system. I encourage everyone to read this report.

Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:12): I rise to make a contribution today, as a member of the Legal and Social Issues Committee, on the rental and housing affordability inquiry. Firstly, I would like to thank the secretariat. It is a huge body of work that everyone has contributed to, and we would not be as organised and as thoughtful as we are in a committee process without the secretariat really making sure not only that the administration is taken care of but also all that information is circulated to us in a timely and efficient way, and they are there to provide that guidance and advice. I really think it is super important that we acknowledge the secretariat in this process, because it was an ongoing, long process.

I was a renter and recently bought a home. Hooray! I was a renter for 25 years. I had been a renter since I was 16, so a lot of these stories did resonate with me. But recommendation 2 on the right to housing, that housing should be formally recognised as a human right, I think is incredibly important. I really appreciate the fact that that is a major recommendation within the report. I welcome the consideration of the Victorian equal opportunity and human rights commissioner Ro Allen in this space. A safe, affordable home should be a human right and people should feel as though they do not have to have a fight with their landlord to have access to clean amenity, to a home with no mould or to a home with a front door that locks. These are some of the stories that we heard from renters during that process. I am really appreciative of the fact that I was part of this inquiry and got to share my experiences as well with many who contributed.

Matthew BACH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:14): Mr Puglielli said before that we do not want to get to a situation where many Victorians are living like second-class citizens. I think we are already there. Huge numbers of our fellow Victorians are living right now like second-, third-, and fourth-class citizens. There is a massive crisis – I agree with what Mr Batchelor said – when it comes to the affordability of property for those who want to buy or rent.

Too often in these debates we have pitted one group against the other, whereas I feel like at the moment renters are dealing with immense financial pain, which so often flows on to have huge impacts throughout their lives. I agree in particular with what Mr Puglielli said about the power of the testimony from so many people who were really struggling, who came to us on the record – it is a hard thing to do to talk to a bunch of strangers in suits – about their grave financial problems and then in a very personal way what that meant for them. Also we heard from people who own properties – and property ownership is a good thing.

It is correct to note that we heard from people who are renting that overwhelmingly they were desperate to buy their own home. They would love to be in a position one day to buy their own home but are a million miles away from that right now. It does not have to be like this. Australia has some of the most expensive property prices right across the world. It does not have to be like this. It is not because of a growing population or COVID or what is going on in China or whatever the normal excuses are that we hear. This is about decades and decades of government failure – local government failure, state government failure, and yes, to a lesser extent, federal government failure. There are very obvious things that we can do. I have talked about some of them; Mr Mulholland has talked for a long time about some of them. When Mr Pesutto came to the leadership, he identified housing affordability for all Victorians, renters and owners, as his uppermost priority.

I want to thank Mr Luu, Mr Batchelor and certainly the amazing committee staff for the work that they have done and urge my colleagues across the chamber to take up some of these recommendations.

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (13:16): I rise as a participating member just to speak very briefly on this report and the significance of a report like this. As we all know, housing has become a real issue under this government, whether that be rental housing, whether that be the affordability of buying your own housing or whether that be access to social housing.

Everyone today has spoken about the enormous effort that is put in by the staff of the committees to produce a document like this – a report of this quality, size and significance. It is an enormous amount of work, and we thank the secretariat for the efforts that they have put into this report. We also thank the secretariats for the efforts that they have put into past reports.

One of the most significant reports that was done in the last Parliament was for the inquiry into homelessness in Victoria, yet this government has completely ignored that report and has not even responded to it. The first recommendation of this report of the inquiry into the rental and housing affordability crisis in Victoria is for the government, as a matter of urgency, to respond to the 2021 inquiry into homelessness in Victoria. These are serious issues – homelessness, affordability of housing for those who can afford their own homes, rental housing for those who need access to rental housing, and social housing – extremely serious issues. They are issues that members of Parliament have put hundreds and hundreds of hours into producing reports on. The secretariat have put hundreds and hundreds of hours into writing these reports. Public funds go into producing reports of this quality, not only in producing them, as in printing them, but also in the work of the secretariat in doing all of this work. It is not a joke. This government needs to respond to these reports and take them seriously. They should respond to the homelessness one and to this one.

Motion agreed to.