Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One in four people in my community of Kooyong are under housing stress. Mortgages are harder to pay and rents are rising. Some people are facing homelessness for the first time. Others wonder how their children or their grandchildren will ever be able to afford to buy a home. Everywhere I go, people want the government to stop tinkering around the edges and instead take bold, decisive action to fix the housing crisis. That's why I'm doing something that federal politicians rarely do: I am urging the state government to build more homes in my local community.

According to the Age, VicRoads will soon leave its enormous headquarters in Denmark Street, Kew. This is a golden opportunity to build more social and affordable homes in our area. More social housing in our community will help the most vulnerable in our community to avoid homelessness and to deal with the current crisis in housing and in the cost of living, while at the same time taking pressure off the Victorian rental market.

We all have a responsibility to fix the housing crisis. With communities like mine, the community of Kooyong, ready to welcome more homes, the federal government should lead from the front. It should work with the states, and I call on the federal government and the Victorian state government to get more homes built and to get this housing crisis under control.