Labor's rank and file demand housing towers remain in public hands
Debate over how to best to redevelop the high-rise sites will shift from the weekend's Labor state conference to federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers' Economic Reform Roundtable in two weeks' time, where housing advocates will push for tax changes to stimulate government investment in public housing.
The state conference on Sunday passed a resolution calling on the Victorian government to retain public ownership of all land across the housing commission tower sites and lobby Canberra to create a GST exemption for materials and services used to build and maintain public housing.
The proposed tax reform, which would also extend Commonwealth Rent Assistance to public housing tenants, is intended to arrest a 30-year-slide in the supply of public housing stock, which is being replaced by community housing where not-for-profit landlords can charge higher rents.
Labor for Housing advocacy group co-convenor Julijana Todorovic said state governments, including in Victoria, needed to build more public housing alongside community housing, and were pressing for the tax changes to remove what she described as a 'public housing penalty'.
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'The reality is because of federal government taxation settings, it is far more economical for state governments to build community housing than it is public housing,' she told the conference.
'The federal government is penalising public housing tenants and their provider, the state, purely for being public. We say this is wrong.'
Victorian Minister for Housing and Building Harriet Shing, speaking to this masthead on the sidelines of the conference, confirmed that tax arrangements for both forms of social housing were part of ongoing discussions with Canberra.
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