Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week I was very pleased to join my friend and colleague the Minister for Housing and Homelessness, Minister Collins; the Victorian housing minister, Colin Brooks; the City of Port Phillip mayor; and many other community members, architects and builders to officially open 42 wonderful new community housing homes right in the heart of my electorate in Balaclava. These are architecturally spectacular apartments that will change the lives of the residents who move in there. They are modern, they are disability-accessible and they have solar panels on the roofs; in fact, they have insulation with an 8.2-star energy rating. They are fantastic, modern examples of inner-city architecture and living, and they are going to be home to community housing residents. I couldn't be prouder to have been there and to know that the federal government partnered with the state government and the local council to help deliver these fantastic new apartments.

Of course, there is a bit of a history on the site. You'll remember that the previous government had a policy to build car parks around every corner; everyone got a car park, during the last government. And they committed $15 million to the Balaclava car park, but they hadn't actually had any conversations with another layer of government, whether the state government or the local council, because they would have found out that that land had already been set aside for these wonderful social housing facilities and homes, so naturally, in all their glory, they decided to retract that $15 million—policy-making at its finest.

But it does bring up a serious point: that the pressures around housing are real, and the pressures around rental properties are real, and we need to be building as many homes as we possibly can, especially social housing homes. There is a pool of money currently sitting there, waiting for this parliament to take action. It's currently in a bill in the other place, in the Senate, where a fund will be set up directly to invest every single year in construction of homes just like the one we opened in Balaclava. I hope those opposite and the Greens do not bandy together, that they do not join an alliance against social housing and against domestic violence places and against housing for our veterans and against affordable homes for frontline workers. I hope this parliament does something sensible and brings the federal government back to the table in building homes, just like the wonderful ones in my electorate.

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