Public housing tower tenants gain more time from being evicted

Public housing tenants in Melbourne’s inner north have gained more time against being forcibly evicted in two months, as a legal battle over secret documents detailing the decision to raze the residential towers wages on.

A class action lawsuit, involving 479 households from three public housing towers in Flemington and North Melbourne, was due to finish on Tuesday but will now extend into 2025 as lawyers for the Victorian government dig in over the ordered release of cabinet documents.

Public housing tenants, led by lead plaintiff Barry Berih, outside the Supreme Court.Credit: Jason South

The court previously heard Homes Victoria intended to issue legal notices to vacate from January 1, 2025, to anyone who had yet to accept an offer for alternative accommodation. The extension of the legal case means tenants who have not already relocated can stay in their homes while the lawsuit continues.

Legal action was launched against the state in January before the government signed a demolition contract worth $100 million for five towers, including the three involved in the class action.

Homes Victoria chief executive Simon Newport told the Supreme Court that 286 households, or 59 per cent of the total of 484 in the three towers, had already moved or had agreed to move. A number are being shifted to newly completed community housing in North Melbourne.

The lawsuit is technically complex and argues the government failed to properly consider residents’ human rights when Labor decided it would demolish the towers, and that other alternatives – including retrofitting the towers – were not considered.

The case hinges on a cabinet submission from Homes Victoria, which outlined the plan to redevelop all of Melbourne’s 44 public high-rise estates and included technical reports that Newport says justified why retrofitting was not feasible. This week, lawyers for the tenants called for those documents to be released, but the government argues they can’t be because they relate to cabinet deliberations.

The timeline for the civil trial has now blown out, and barrister Liam Brown, SC, acting for the state, said the government needed another three weeks to compile further arguments on why the documents should stay secret.

Justice Melinda Richards said she had anticipated giving the parties a decision before the end of the year, before eviction notices were issued.

“Now that’s no longer going to be possible,” Richards said. The judge required assurances from government lawyers that no eviction notices would be issued before the trial was over.

The tower in Racecourse Road, Flemington, is one of the first public housing towers earmarked for demolition.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Opposition housing spokesman Richard Riordan hit back at comments made by Premier Jacinta Allan on Monday that the class action tenants were a “small group backed by the Greens”.

“Its 99.5 per cent of the tenants in those towers, not a motley band of Greens lovers that the premier [suggested],” Riordan said on Tuesday

“This is a very, very important case that speaks to the way the government does business. It’s become the modus operandi of this government to claim cabinet in confidence. It could set a huge precedent for other decisions like the Commonwealth Games.”

Tenants packed a courtroom to watch the proceedings on Tuesday, including Alicia Lai, who has turned down an offer to move from her two-bedroom flat in a tower for a one-bedroom apartment run by an external agency.

“It’s only very small,” Lai said of the apartment. “It’s like a prison. There’s only one window in the bedroom. There’s no window in the lounge room.”

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