A genuine policy contest has finally broken out over housing in Victoria – but it is as much about politics as it is about planning.
The opposition leader, Jess Wilson, on Wednesday announced a plan to expand Melbourne’s capital city zone – effectively expanding the CBD to take in Collingwood, Fitzroy, Fishermans Bend, North Melbourne, Parkville and parts of Southbank not already included. This will mean height limits can be lifted, density increased and development encouraged to “restore vibrancy” to the city.
“Demand for inner urban living from young professionals, downsizers, students and small households remains strong but supply has not kept pace,” Wilson told the Victorian Chamber and Herald Sun’s Future Victoria Summit.
“This will enable residential growth in inner-city areas that are already serviced by public transport and strong connectivity.”
At the same time, she committed to fast-track 27 existing precinct structure plans across Melbourne’s outer growth corridors. The Labor government has earmarked about 180,000 homes across those growth areas over a decade but Wilson argues it can be done faster.
She also committed to work with regional councils to “identify opportunities and infrastructure requirements to support new housing development”, though offered little detail.
The policy – Wilson’s first on housing – is being framed as an alternative to the premier Jacinta Allan’s plan to rezone 50 inner-Melbourne areas located near public transport to deliver 300,000 homes by 2051.
Yet despite all the talk of contrast, the plan offers little that is truly new.
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For one, the Herald Sun’s map of “Where the Libs will fast-track new home builds” was pulled from a government website, with the areas unchanged from those already earmarked by Labor. The site notes the 10-year sequencing of precinct structure plans was designed to ensure “infrastructure delivery keeps pace with development and land can be adequately serviced when it is released”.
That makes the Coalition’s promise to fast-track those areas problematic. For years it has criticised Labor for failing to deliver infrastructure in Melbourne’s booming outer suburbs. Fast-tracking development in those same areas could intensify the problem.
Wilson countered this by saying the Coalition would reform the growth areas infrastructure contribution, ensuring funds collected from developers were spent earlier and within the communities they were raised.
Wilson’s inner-city proposal also overlaps with Labor’s.
The Melbourne and Yarra local government areas (LGAs) are among Labor’s 50 “activity centres” – dubbed “city-wide activity centres” – with plans to rezone under-utilised land. These are the very the same LGAs Wilson wants to rezone under her plan.
The main difference is her rejection of Labor’s activity centre model, which proposes apartments of between 10 and 20 storeys around stations and “gentle, scaled height limits and more low-rise apartments and townhouses” of between three and six storeys in the “walkable catchments” nearby.
Wilson told the summit that planning in middle and outer suburbs should be managed locally, by “those who are closest to the local community”. Such a decision means Liberal-held suburbs earmarked under Labor’s activity centres are spared.
Of Labor’s 50 centres, 26 are located in Liberal-held seats. Nine sit in Malvern alone, where Amelia Hamer has been preselected following Michael O’Brien’s retirement.
But in Wilson’s model, greenfield expansion is focused in Labor heartland, while in the city, North Melbourne and Parkville are in the Greens-held seat of Melbourne, Fitzroy and Collingwood in the Greens seat of Richmond and Fishermans Bend and Southbank in Labor’s Albert Park.
Labor maintains its sites have been identified by the Department of Transport and Planning due to their proximity to public transport, infrastructure, jobs and services.
But the move is clearly strategic: Labor doesn’t expect to win these seats but targeting them allows the government to appeal to millennial and gen Z voters, who now outnumber baby boomers on the electoral roll and consistently rank housing affordability as their top concern.
On Wednesday Allan appealed to these very voters when criticising Wilson’s plan.
“As premier, I want to get more millennials and young people into homes – everywhere,” she said.
“We shouldn’t be in a situation where a line gets drawn through the city of Melbourne, down along the Yarra River and says to everyone on the south and the eastern side of that line, we’re not going to build homes for you. We’re going to lock young people and millennials out.”
Though the Coalition plan was welcomed by the Property Council, even it warned Melbourne could not rely on the inner city alone to meet housing demand in established areas.
Yimby Melbourne’s lead organiser, Jonathan O’Brien, was more blunt. He said it signalled a “continuation of a 30-year status quo” of building in the city and on Melbourne’s fringes, effectively “locking up wealthier suburbs from delivering the housing where people want to live most”.
On the same day in New South Wales, the Coalition took a different approach. There, the opposition housing spokesperson, Chris Rath, backed a Grattan Institute research note calling for the introduction of a townhouse code modelled on Victoria’s. The Victorian Liberals opposed the code when it was introduced here.
“The Coalition is resolutely pro-housing supply and that means considering bold policy proposals like this to build more homes,” Rath said.
Wilson has described her announcement as “the first plank” of a “detailed vision for planning and housing in Victoria”. Perhaps she should take a cue from her NSW counterparts for the rest of the plan.
• Benita Kolovos is Guardian Australia’s Victorian state correspondent
