Writing on the wall

By Richard Wynne 

As Melbourne becomes as diverse as New York City, Richard Wynne tells us public and affordable housing is key to nurturing communities.

Arden Watson-Cropley. Yulius Antares Taime. Ni Na Nguyen, Badia Abdo. Four names. If you live in Melbourne, you may not know the people behind those names, but you’ve probably seen their faces. That’s because they each feature on the largest mural in the southern hemisphere, painted on the side of a public-housing tower in Collingwood.

The world has changed since that mural was painted by artist Matt Adnate in 2018. Since then, we’ve had the Black Summer bushfires, then COVID-19 and now post pandemic economic upheavals – and each of these cataclysms has tested the resilience of our environment, community and economy. All of which brings me back to that mural.

For me, the Collingwood mural is about more than those four individuals. It’s about the 2,500 residents of the public-housing estate that their faces represent and, by extension, all the other faces of all the other people in all the families and communities that live in all the cities, suburbs and towns of Victoria.

Victoria is very much like that mural – diverse, dynamic and individual. But we are strongest when we stick together. The good news is that the vast majority of Victorians have stuck together – looking out for and acting in the best interests of one another. The challenge we face now is to stay together – to build on our sense of community as we navigate the challenges that lie ahead. Because the testing times are not over.

Over the next decade Victoria will face a convergence of environmental, social and economic changes, and we will need to work as a community to adapt to those changes. We need to plan for our community. We need to invest for our community. And we have to come together as a community to bring those plans and investments to life.

We also need to face reality. Population growth has been a controversial topic at times over the past 15 years. Victoria has been growing at a rate of 140,000 people a year. Melbourne has been projected to become Australia’s largest city within a decade. And our state’s population has been projected to hit 10 million by 2051. In the short term, COVID-19 halted immigration-based population growth, but migrants are coming again because they’ll want Victoria’s world-class way of life – and Victoria, in turn, needs their skills and energy.

In other words, population growth will resume at a clip. Which means that by the middle of this century Melbourne’s population will be almost the same – and just as diverse – as the current population of New York City. We need to use the current population pause to accelerate our plans and investments for growth. We also need to prepare accelerations in: our environment with climate change; our demographics with our ageing and diverse population; and our economy with digital disruption and the creation of an Asian middle class of more than three billion people.

To manage this convergence of accelerated change, we need to juggle priorities. In the short term, we need to ensure services and infrastructure are more affordable and accessible. That’s why our government is investing record amounts in schools and hospitals, as well as in transformational projects like the Metro Tunnel, North East Link and the West Gate Tunnel. In the medium-to-long term, we need to ensure Victoria has a critical mass of healthy, skilled people to maintain our standard of living.

That was the thinking behind Plan Melbourne – the government’s 35-year blueprint for managing population growth, growing the economy, creating affordable and accessible housing, improving transport, responding to climate change and creating a city of 20-minute neighbourhoods.

When I launched Plan Melbourne I said Victoria had to commit to a generation of action. And some of the most important actions need to be taken in my portfolio of Housing. According to the Housing Affordability Act, housing is affordable if the price of a median dwelling is no more than three times higher than the median annual household income. In Melbourne, the price of a median dwelling is more than 10 times above the median annual household income. That means the city’s housing is severely unaffordable.

The government worked hard to improve supply and affordability. For instance, we boosted supply by unlocking enough land for another 100,000 housing lots and announced plans for 12 new communities with a capacity for another 50,000 homes. In addition, I worked with the housing industry to devise new models for housing development, including build-to-rent, and funded 11 councils to develop affordable-housing strategies.

Besides specific actions, though, we needed to have an informed public discussion about the kind of communities we want to live and work in. For instance, only a fraction of rental properties in Melbourne are currently affordable to someone on the Newstart Allowance. Is that the kind of community we want? Are we prepared to live in a society where there is an underclass that is effectively homeless? And do we understand that, by allowing this kind of economic sectarianism to exist, we run the risk of stunting our community and economy?

I live in Melbourne’s inner city. My office was a short walk from that wonderful mural in Collingwood. And I’ve walked up and down the stairs of those public-housing towers. And I’ve been deeply impressed – and moved – by the people I’ve met in those housing towers.

The Collingwood public-housing estate is a strong community – just like so many other strong communities across Victoria. And, right now, Victoria needs that community strength in all its diversity and vitality.

With that in mind, let me come back to Arden, Yulius, Ni Na and Badia – the four Melburnians immortalised on that mural. When I see the mural, I think of all the wonderful people I met as they passed through that public-housing estate. People from every corner of the world who came here to build a better future – and who used public housing as a launching pad for themselves and their children.

If you’re wondering what drove me, politically, it was the great Victorians like the residents in the Collingwood public-housing estate. I worked for the future they will help create – a future that is all about diversity and sustainability, and community and opportunity. 

Richard Wynne is a member of the Labor Party and the former Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs in the Victorian Government.

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