VICTORIA
The Case for a Reset

“We just need to be in the game. We’re not at the moment.”

David Southwick says it in his electoral office, and with Victorians seventeen days from the polls, the line lands like a countdown. The Liberal deputy leader and Shadow Minister for Planning, and for Housing and Building, has his diagnosis ready, and he delivers it like a verdict on twelve years of Labor government: Victoria has stopped being competitive.

The clock is not on Labor’s side. Newspoll has the Coalition ahead 55 to 45 on a two-party-preferred basis, and Roy Morgan and DemosAU both make it 56 to 44. Labor, in caretaker mode since 3 November, is polling between 18 and 24 per cent, with One Nation level with it in several polls. For a property industry that has waited years for a reset, 28 November is the date that matters.

The Slogan Nobody Wanted

Every market has a nickname for the place it avoids. Victoria’s is ‘Anywhere But Victoria’, and Southwick does not dodge it. “We have that saying,” he tells me. Investors weigh Melbourne against other states, he says, and find “a competitive disadvantage when it comes to taxation”. Foreign investor charges and the windfall gains tax are on his list. “That’s why people are choosing to take their money elsewhere.”

The numbers are his ammunition. Taxes and regulation, he says, make up 43 per cent of the cost of a new home, a figure the Housing Industry Association backs for a Melbourne house and land package. He counts 70 new taxes in a decade, 40 of them on property, a tally that is the Opposition’s own. Property taxes, he says, prop up about 47 per cent of the budget. The Parliamentary Budget Office puts duty and land tax alone at 43 per cent of state tax revenue.

Labor, in his words, is “experts at draining the river dry, of investment.” His cure: “We need tax reform urgently.” The one firm number the Coalition has published is a land tax-free threshold restored to $300,000 over five years.

Labor Just Does Not Get How Capital Behaves

The government has noticed. Premier Ben Carroll has promised to lift the same threshold to $300,000, with the full $300,000 not reached until 2033-34, against the Coalition’s five-year plan. On 14 October he went further: absentee owner surcharge exemptions for developers, during construction and for up to two years after completion, plus a review of that surcharge and the foreign purchaser additional duty if Labor is re-elected.

Industry has been underwhelmed by Labor’s feeble tax plays. The surcharge stays at 4 per cent, the exemption targets projects of $50 million or more that include affordable housing, and the HIA said it would not make many medium and high-density projects viable. The Property Council wants deeper reform. For the Coalition, the move is a tailwind. Both sides now accept the settings are wrong. The fight is over speed and credibility.

Certainty Pays

Labor’s planning model, Southwick says, “is all about government control, telling people where to build, what to build, how much to build.” His alternative is “very much a free market policy”, built on partnership. “Governments don’t build houses,” he says. The private sector does.

Fishermans Bend is his Exhibit A. The official vision is 80,000 residents and 80,000 jobs by 2050; Southwick thinks it could carry far more, and floated 200,000 homes. Yet after 12 years, he says, developers still had no contributions plan telling them what they must pay. “Nobody knows what the rules are.” The plan, he says, arrived only weeks before polling day. The state’s site now lists it as approved and gazetted.

The fix starts with a system he calls “broken”. A Coalition government would work with councils to set structure plans for the next 20 to 50 years, then require councils to build to those rules, so approvals stop being political. Referral authorities, from water to cultural heritage, would face time limits, with a deemed-to-comply measure if they miss them. Delays on some precincts, he says, have stretched to a decade, and “the purchaser will have to pay for it”.

I ask whether a new minister could avoid the year or two of deliberation that has slowed past governments. “We have to be able to hit the ground running,” he says. On regulation, he pointed to the National Construction Code. Victoria adopted the 2025 edition on 1 May 2026; New South Wales, Queensland and the ACT delayed to May 2027, the HIA says.

Data Centres, With a Plan

The server halls are where the politics gets practical. On 22 September, Carroll said a re-elected Labor government would require new data centres to supply their own renewable energy and storage, use recycled water and keep 150 metres from homes. Victoria already has more than 50, with $5.8 billion invested last year.

Southwick backs the sector but wants a plan. “This is where you build data centres. This is what the expectations are,” he says, so industry knows the rules. He rejects my word proliferation. Labor, he argues, fast-tracked approvals for quick revenue, then wound back rules after community anger. “There’s no social licence,” he says, and international investors are unsettled because “the government kind of keeps changing the rules.”

His live case is Lovely Banks, north of Geelong. In June, NEXTDC paid about $165 million for 169 hectares there, farmland earmarked for housing and reportedly home to about 2,000 potential lots. After a decade of planning work, Southwick says, the government appears to be “jumping at the money.” NEXTDC has not publicly detailed its plans. Queensland, he notes, is chasing data centres hard. “We need to be in that game. No question.”

Build It in a Factory

On modular housing, Southwick does not hedge. “Innovation is the key to achieving affordability,” he says. Labor, he argues, is protecting a unionised on-site workforce at the expense of factory-built homes, a charge the government rejects. Minister Nick Staikos says Labor is “embracing innovative, cutting-edge housing models”.

Southwick wants an innovation centre showcasing best practice, manufacturers co-located, and training through TAFEs and universities. He looks abroad too. “China’s doing a great job in this space,” he says, getting projects to market faster and cheaper. The scale differs, he concedes, but “if we have a head buried in the sand, we will never deal with affordability issues.”

A Cop on the Beat

Then there is trust. Southwick wants a construction enforcement watchdog, “a cop on the beat”, to stop builders being hit with what he calls a union tax. I ask whether the royal commission Carroll announced on 29 July, covering contractors, labour hire, government and unions, is a “Mickey Mouse” one. “Absolutely,” he says. A proper inquiry needs more strength and breadth. “You can’t have a student mark their own homework.”

Business, he says, is “desperate for change”. “They love Victoria. They still see the opportunity.” Labor will point to 55,000 homes completed in 2025, the most of any state, though well short of the 80,000-a-year target.

Victoria added about 110,000 people in the year to March, more than New South Wales. Southwick wants housing, not the Suburban Rail Loop, to be the state’s next great build. “It’s all about confidence,” he says. “There’s no confidence in Victoria.” His message for 28 November: “You tell us where, you tell us when, you tell us how, we’ll get out of the way and help.” With the polls leaning his way and seventeen days left, the question for investors is less whether the settings change than how fast.