Back in May, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews warned that a lack of housing supply is driving up rents across the state.
“Anybody who is applying for a rental and finds that they’re one of 25 different applications or 50 even … they can tell you there’s not enough supply”, he said.
“That’s why we need to make better decisions and make them faster”.
Last month, I reported that the Andrews Victorian Government had only added 74 units to the state’s public housing supply in four years. This is despite a 45% increase in the social housing waiting list over the same period.
Victoria also has the fewest social housing units in Australia, accounting for only 3% of all dwellings. The national average is 4.2%, which is deemed highly inadequate by international standards.
The state’s housing shortfall is being driven by extreme immigration and a lack of government investment in social and public housing.
After adding an astonishing 2 million people this century, Victoria’s population is expected to grow by an astounding 694,000 over the five years to 2026-27, according to the May federal budget:
Source: 2023 federal budget
Thus, Victoria is expected to add the equivalent of 1.5 Canberra’s worth of population in only five years, which will obviously worsen the state’s chronic infrastructure and housing shortages.
Based on historical settlement patterns, around 500,000 of this population expansion will land in Melbourne during those same five years.
Despite the worst housing crisis on record, the Andrews Government has sat on surplus government land set aside for affordable housing for six years:
“Labor promised during the 2014 election campaign which swept it to power that it would launch a scheme developing surplus government properties for housing”.
“In early 2017, Premier Daniel Andrews announced that six surplus government sites – in Parkville, Broadmeadows, Reservoir, Noble Park, Boronia and Wodonga – would be sold to developers at discount rates in return for 100 social homes being incorporated in the wider private housing projects”.
“And as the sites were publicly owned, planning approvals would be handled by the government, bypassing local councils and communities, in a bid to speed up the process. The government said construction would start in 2018”.
But not a single home — private or social — has been built on any of the sites; the largest of the projects has stalled completely, and the other five are languishing at various stages in the state’s planning processes”.
Meanwhile, Premier Dan Andrews told Italian Language paper Il Globo last month that he has been actively lobbying the federal government to increase net overseas migration into Melbourne:
“The new federal government have taken some important steps towards increasing the amount of permanent skilled migration, but I think they might need to do more again”.
“Prime minister Albanese knows this. I’ve spoken to him about it personally and part of it also is clearing the Visa backlog”.
Therefore, Dan Andrews is actively conspiring to worsen the state’s housing shortage, while refusing to supply public housing to the growing population.
Victoria’s nation-leading public housing shortage is another indictment of the state Labor Party, which has ruled Victoria for 20 of the last 24 years and purports to represent the working class and the vulnerable.
