Daniel Andrews pledges $5.3bn for public housing a boost to vulnerable and jobs

The Victorian Premier has promised to build 12,000 new affordable and public dwellings after decades of underfunding.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced the public housing plan on Sunday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

The Andrews government has announced an unprecedented $5.3bn investment in public and affordable housing, pledging to build more than 12,000 dwellings over the next four years, creating approximately 10,000 jobs over that period.

The announcement comes after decades of underfunding of public housing in a state where Labor has been in power for 16 of the past 20 years, with Victoria until now having the lowest proportion of public housing per capita compared to other Australian states and territories, and one of the lowest in the OECD.

Productivity Commission figures show that since the Andrews government came to power in 2014, recurrent net expenditure on public housing fell annually until the 2018-19 financial year, when $11 million was added to 2014 levels.

Last financial year Victoria spent $75 per person on public housing, compared to $135 in NSW and $341 in the Northern Territory, with public housing making up 1.9 per cent of Victoria’s housing stock, compared with a 4.6 per cent average across the OECD.

Sunday’s $5.3bn announcement will see social housing stock increased by 10 per cent over four years, delivering 9,300 new public housing units, including replacing 1,100 old units, as well as building 2,900 affordable and low-cost homes for low-to-moderate income earners.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said that when the $5.3bn was added to $500m announced earlier this year for renovation of existing public housing stock, the investment in social and affordable housing was the “biggest of its kind anywhere in our country, at any time”.

“This is all about securing livelihoods, many, many jobs, and giving that construction industry the certainty they need after a very challenging year,” Mr Andrews said.

“Of course they’re not jobs for their own sake. Each of those 10,000 (jobs) a year for each of the next four years with the certainty of that line of work, and spend and invest, that’s all about creating economic activity and economic benefit for every single Victorian.”

“It’s very difficult to provide for the people you love the most, it’s very difficult to achieve, it’s very difficult to have stability and certainty and safety in your life if your housing circumstances are fundamentally insecure.

Last financial year Victoria spent $75 per person on public housing, compared to $135 in NSW and $341 in the Northern Territory. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ David Crosling

“If you don’t know where you’re living, or if you have tenuous arrangements that can change any time it’s very difficult to deal with many of the other challenges that you might face, it’s incredibly difficult for you to build a solid and strong future, for you to make the contribution that you are meant to make in our Victorian community.

“Fairness is always important. If you can combine fairness and decency and equity with literally tens of thousands of jobs, that’s what we need to do and that is exactly what our government will do, through this package, and indeed many, many other announcements that we’ll make in the coming days.”

The funding will be included in the 2020-21 state budget, to be unveiled on November 24.

Mr Andrews said 1000 of the new houses would be set aside for Aboriginal Victorians, while 2000 will be for those with mental illnesses, and an additional 1000 will be for people who are victims of family violence.

A quarter of the houses will be built in regional Victoria, with all built to 7-star energy rating standards to assist in keeping power bills low.

Mr Andrews said 10 per cent of the work would be done by apprentices, cadets and trainees, with the number of jobs created by the project peaking at 18,000 and generating an estimated $6.7bn in economic activity.

Social procurement targets will see women, Aboriginal Victorians, people with disability, social housing tenants and “people from diverse backgrounds” prioritised for the work.

Mr Andrews said new government agency Homes Victoria, had been established to work across government, industry and the social housing sector to deliver this record housing growth and to manage existing public housing.

Under the government’s timeline, building of 6000 dwellings will be underway within 18 months, with 11,000 to be completed by June 2023 and a further 1300, to be completed by June 2024.

‘I wouldn’t concede that we haven’t made a substantial investment’: Andrews

Asked why it had taken his government six years and a pandemic to address the fact that Victoria has had the lowest per capita rate of investment in public housing for many years, Mr Andrews said: “Well I wouldn’t see it in those terms”.

“I think today’s a little more hopeful than that,” he said.

“We have invested very substantial amounts of money in social and public housing. We’ve also made sure that we’ve got the biggest infrastructure agenda in the nation, so it’s not like we haven’t been getting on and doing things, but as (Housing Minister) Richard (Wynne) said, we fully acknowledge that there‘s more work that needs to be done in this space, and there are many things that I think are going to happen in the years to come that are the result of pressure and the, the really important nature of challenges, and they’ve been exposed through this one in 100 year event.

“I’m not so much focused on why I took that, and I wouldn’t concede the point that we haven’t made substantial investment over a long period of time, but there’s more to be done, and we’re doing that, and not just a little bit more, we’re doing more than any government: state, territory, or indeed the commonwealth government has ever done in affordable and social housing.”

Asked what would happen to those the $5.3bn package will not be able to house, given there were more than 80,000 people on the public housing waiting list before the coronavirus pandemic began, Mr Andrews said:

“Well we’ll continue to invest.”

“It is completely impossible to go and build 50,000 additional homes,” he said.

“I don’t think any state government will be able to find the budget capacity to be able to do that. There’d also be the small matter of finding the tradespeople and other firms to go and get that done.

“I think we could, we, as in governments across both state and the national level, could do more, if there was a partnership, and I think that the key point here is that I don‘t think there’s any better, or any higher-value partnership, building affordable and social housing, particularly at this time, creating, it wouldn’t be tens of thousands of jobs, it’d be hundreds of thousands of jobs across our nation.

“This is a massive package. Could it be bigger again? Of course. But we would, we would need partners to do that.

“I’m not here today to talk about the federal government, but there will always be limits to how much you can get built in a particular period of time.

“We think we’ve found the sweet spot, if you like. This is 10,000 jobs a year for the next four years, peaking at 18,000 jobs, and more than 12,000 families that will have the security and safety, and the life-changing reality, of home that is theirs and is safe and secure, for the future.”

‘Unfinished business’: Housing Minister

Mr Wynne, who began his career as a social worker in the Flemington housing commission towers, said the path to being able to make the $5.3bn announcement had been a “long journey”.

“I’ve really devoted most of my working life to our public and social housing tenancies, from my earliest days as a social worker at the Flemington towers, through to today, it’s been a very, very long journey, but it’s a journey, I’ve actually taken for most of that time, with the Premier, for the last 20 years, because his focus has always been upon ensuring that we get good public outcomes, and there is no better public outcome than to this form of investment that we have today,” Mr Wynne said.

“So today, it’s about recognising that yes, there was unfinished business, but we are rectifying that without doubt.”