“Melbourne may be an unhappy home for its 24,000 homeless residents”, begins Prosper Australia’s <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/speculative-vacancies-2025-data-update/">2025 Speculative Vacancy report</a>, released on 27 November, “but it remains surprisingly hospitable to the 32,000 dwellings within the metropolitan area that sat entirely empty throughout 2024”.
In a humane world there would be a simple mathematical solution to this problem: 32,000 houses minus 24,000 homeless people equals no-one homeless and at least 8,000 homes to spare. Instead, we live in a world where property hoarders speculate while the homeless are left to die on the streets.
The report uses water usage to map empty homes across nearly 2 million dwellings in the greater Melbourne area. Those using zero litres of water per day over the year are classed as completely empty—that’s the 31,890 dwellings referenced above, the number of which has increased by 16 percent since the previous year. In addition to that there are the houses averaging between zero and 50 litres per day (50 litres is about equivalent to a dripping tap). The average daily water use in a single-person Melbourne household is 200 litres, so these houses are likely occupied for less than a quarter of the year. Many may be empty all year but have water leaks or use water for gardening.
When you factor in these “underused” homes, the total number of vacant homes in Melbourne totals a shocking 100,945. As the report points out, these houses “could theoretically house everyone on the Victorian <a href="https://www.homes.vic.gov.au/applications-victorian-housing-register-vhr">social housing waiting list</a> twice over”. That housing list includes people like Maya, interviewed recently by Kate Ashton in her <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-15/social-public-housing-wait-times-victoria-family-violence/105655044">ABC article</a> “Family violence survivors waiting years for social housing as demand surges in Victoria”, published on 15 September. Maya fled an abusive relationship in 2017 and was eligible for social housing as a priority applicant on the Victorian Housing Register. Despite this, she was left waiting eight years for housing for her and her two children.
Thousands pay with their lives for this artificially maintained scarcity of housing. In October the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released its <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/homelessness-services/specialist-homelessness-services-feature-analysis/contents/about">Specialist Homelessness Services: feature analysis</a> report, which collected data on those who have received support for homelessness. It estimates that in 2023 there were an average of “nine potentially avoidable deaths per day” in this cohort—that is, nine people every day who might have lived had they received the necessary care and support. Their lives are cut brutally short in a society that could have ended homelessness, but instead, politicians continue to allow the number of empty homes to grow while the social housing waiting list grows longer and longer.
So why are so many homes left empty?
Prosper Australia describes it as a “rational decision” on the part of the owners. And it is, in its twisted way. But this seems counterintuitive—surely, they’d want to make money from renting out their properties? The thing is that the real estate market is so hot, and the taxes on it so porous, that in just a few months the potential profits in capital gains can eclipse a whole year’s rent. Domain’s <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/research/house-price-report/september-2025/">“September 2025 House Price Report”</a> found that Melbourne house prices rose 2.2 percent from the June quarter, a median increase of $23,045 in just three months. In the same period an owner receiving Melbourne’s median rent of $580 (according to Domain’s <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/research/rental-report/september-2025/">“September 2025 Rental Report”</a>) might make around $7,500.
If an owner is leasing their property, then they risk missing a peak in the market while they’re giving a notice of eviction to their tenants—losing potentially tens of thousands in profit. 
Governments aren’t just aware of these problems. Their policies have created them. Capital gains and negative gearing tax concessions have cultivated a financialised housing market that is not primarily about making money from rent, but about the increasing value of capital. The human right to shelter has been made dependent, in Australia today, on the whims of an investor class for whom housing is primarily a commodity rather than something designed to meet basic human needs. Rental properties at least have the side effect of housing people. Investment properties don’t even need to do that.
Taxing empty properties would be a good start. But Labor’s Vacant Residential Land Tax (VRLT), which applies to residences that are empty at least half the year, was collected on only 1,779 properties in 2024. “It’s a farce”, housing activist and former Victorian Socialists Senate candidate Jordan van den Lamb told Red Flag. “Labor is taxing less than a fiftieth of the 100,000 homes that we know are empty for most of the year. They get to look like they’re doing something while they let property hoarders get away with murder.” 
Van den Lamb, known for his social media handle “purplepingers”, has managed to build a database of more than 1,000 vacant homes in Victoria alone, some of which are squatted by those in need of housing. If he can do that with the help of community submissions, you can only imagine what state and local governments could do if they took this issue seriously. “But they’d rather spend millions <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-19/israel-gaza-protests-in-melbourne-victoria-police-bill/105792396">policing anti-genocide protests</a> and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/being-homeless-is-not-a-crime-cbd-security-guard-program-under-scrutiny-20250918-p5mw3r.html">hiring security guards</a> to harass homeless people than police the criminals responsible for our housing crisis”, Jordan says.
Even if the VRLT were applied to all the empty houses, though, it’s unlikely it would make a big difference. Properties are taxed 1 percent of their total value for the first year they’re vacant, up to a maximum of 3 percent after three years. Given Melbourne’s median house price rose 7.7 percent this year, this is only a seventh of what property speculators stand to gain. If they’re willing to give up rent, this tax is unlikely to change their minds.
A simple solution would be for empty investment properties to be seized and turned into public housing. This is the kind of drastic measure that would be appropriate for what amounts, in the context of our growing homelessness crisis, to a form of social murder. For Australia’s capitalist governments, though, this would be regarded as the greatest sacrilege against the right of property investors to turn a profit.

Cormac Mills Ritchard

‘We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas’: Labor turns blind eye to Melbourne’s 100,000 empty homes

The Victorian Labor government signed a treaty with Aboriginal people on 13 November amid much celebration and back-patting. The treaty is the result of ten years of negotiations between the state government and the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria—the elected body representing Aboriginal people. Under the treaty provisions, the First Nations Assembly will become a consultative body, providing non-binding advice to the state government on Indigenous policies and actions. 
The treaty has been a moment for Labor to trumpet its commitment to Indigenous rights and justice. It will bring “a future built on respect and partnership” and “strengthen culture for generations to come” according to Premier Jacinta Allan. 
But just a day before the treaty agreement was signed into law, Allan and Victorian Labor announced new “adult time for violent crime” laws. These laws will make children as young as 14 face adult courts if they are charged with a range of offences, and if found guilty, given adult sentences. Currently, children cannot receive custodial sentences longer than three years: under Allan’s proposal, they can potentially be jailed for life. Allan’s measures appear to be modelled on the Queensland state Liberal government’s “adult time for adult crime” laws, which increase jail terms for young people convicted of 20 offences. 
Allan and Labor’s celebration of treaty, while simultaneously moving to lock up children for longer, displays the shallowness of their commitment to achieving genuine change for Aboriginal people. This is not a mistake or the result of ignorance that might be solved by greater consultation. The effects of law-and-order policies and increasing incarceration rates on Aboriginal people and our communities are well known. 
Just last February, a federal government Senate report into the incarceration of young Aboriginal people found that young Aboriginal people involved in the child justice system experience poverty, inter-generational trauma and racism. This builds on a report by the National Children’s Commissioner released in 2024, and supplemented a month before Allan’s “adult time for violent crime” announcement, which argues strongly against incarceration of children and highlights the disproportionate effect this has on Aboriginal children and young people. 
Already in Victoria, young Aboriginal people aged 10 to 17 are around 9.5 times more likely to be placed into detention than non-Aboriginal children, according to the Sentencing Advisory Council. On top of this, draconian bail laws introduced last March by the Victorian Labor government have expanded the state’s ability to imprison Aboriginal people for longer. 
The Victorian Aboriginal Legal service has reported that since the bail law changes, there has been a 46 percent bail refusal rate for Aboriginal people, compared to a 6 percent rate for non-Aboriginal people. For young people, VALS reported that their youth legal practice, Balit Ngulu, has seen a 233 percent increase in its caseload due to bail being refused for Aboriginal young people because of the harsh laws. 
Allan’s proposed “adult time for violent crime” laws will only further entrench the over-representation of Aboriginal youth in jails, along with migrant youth who face similarly systematic disadvantage and marginalisation. 
There cannot be equality or “respect and partnership”, in a system that cannot solve but instead criminalises and punishes poverty and oppression. Achieving genuine justice for Aboriginal people would as a start involve measures to improve radically Aboriginal people’s living standards, including massive funding increases to communities and services, the expansion of public housing, improvement in the quality and availability of education and measures to address inter-generational trauma and cultural destruction. But all this comes at the expense of providing subsidies to fossil fuel companies and other business handouts—much easier just to have some advisers in the fold who government can pretend to listen to every so often.
While there should be a treaty and it’s long overdue, the reality is it won’t be enough to challenge the fundamental dynamic and reality of the system we live under. Consultation serves as a smokescreen for government; it is intended to moderate the ambitions and goals of Aboriginal activists and stymie radical demands, the sorts of demands that need to be made and won if the situation for Aboriginal people is to improve meaningfully. And it does not stop government acting in interests opposite to those of Aboriginal people, as the earliest days of the treaty era have already shown.
Ultimately, the capitalist system is fundamentally unwilling to provide the justice that Aboriginal people so thoroughly deserve. Instead, it regularly introduces measures that make the situation worse, and not due to a lack of good advice. We can’t rely on treaty to change this. What’s needed is a united fight against the system.

Oskar Martin

Locking up kids shows Victoria’s treaty is for show

<a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/community-health-centre-closures-must-be-stopped">Previously in Red Flag, we reported the devastating news</a> that some of the longest running community health centres in the country would close, leaving around 12,500 people without a GP. Since then, a spirited community campaign to defend the clinics in Melbourne’s inner north has won a reprieve. Reprinted below is the 20 November announcement from the Victorian Socialists, whose members played a leading role in the campaign.
--------------------
This morning, we woke to the welcome news that the majority of services at the three cohealth community clinics in Fitzroy, Collingwood and Kensington, which were slated to close before Christmas, will remain open until July 2026. 
The Labor Party has buckled under pressure—the pressure of people power. The Fitzroy, Collingwood and Kensington communities, who have fought hard against the government, held mass meetings, protests, pickets and more. Their efforts were not in vain. 
Victorian Socialists acted as soon as we heard news of the closures, which would have left 12,500 people without access to GP services, and left 70 cohealth staff out of work. Our “Socialists In Healthcare” group, alongside local VS branches, helped to transform local anger into collective action. We mobilised hundreds of local community members to bring the issue into the public eye and to put pressure on the state and federal governments. 
Now, federal Labor has announced $1.5 million to keep GP services open until mid-2026 while a review is undertaken. The community has won an important reprieve. Everyone who came to a rally or a meeting, stood on a picket, put up posters or handed out leaflets should be proud: together, we forced Labor to act. 
However, the fight is not yet over. For one thing pharmacy and counselling services are still slated to close on 19 December, including the methadone service for 1,250 people trying to recover from serious addictions. We have to prevent the closure of these lifesaving services. 
Further, an eight-month pause is not a promise to keep the clinics open long term. Nor is it a commitment to maintaining the community health care model. It is possible that Labor is just buying time to hose down the justifiable anger and that its review will ultimately determine that the clinics are “unsustainable”. 
Twenty-five community health clinics across Victoria are still under threat. Those who depend on these clinics include some of the most vulnerable people in the community: refugees, newly arrived migrants, people experiencing homelessness, those living with disabilities and patients managing complex chronic illness. 
These clinics provide vital health services, including pharmacy services, opioid replacement programs, and nursing, counselling and allied health options. Yet they are controlled by private companies and boards. Two such clinics in Melbourne’s south-east have been slated for closure by the Better Health Network Board. 
The coming months will determine whether community health is adequately funded and put into community hands, or cut and further privatised. We must use this time to build a movement against the closure of community clinics and against broader healthcare cuts. We’ve shown that when the community stands together, we can force the government to act. 
To get involved in the campaign or to find out more, follow @socialistsinhealthcare on Instagram.

Community pressure wins reprieve on health clinic closures

Community members and workers across the health and community sectors have been reeling over the last fortnight following the sudden news that some of the longest running community health centres in the country are closing their doors. 
The decision by Cohealth to close its general practice services in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood, Fitzroy and Kensington by the end of 2025, and to shut the Collingwood site entirely by mid-2026, will leave around 12,500 people without a GP. The closure will also cut off pharmacy services, including opioid replacement programs, as well as nursing, counselling and allied health care. 
Thousands of people depend on these clinics for their everyday health and survival, including some of the most vulnerable in the community: refugees, newly arrived migrants, people experiencing homelessness, those living with disabilities, and patients managing complex chronic illnesses.
Staff at Cohealth received notification of the closures via email on the same day the public announcement was made. There was no warning, no consultation and no plan to ensure continuity of care. For the communities affected, this is not just a policy change: it is a devastating loss of a vital lifeline.
Having spent eight years working as a doctor in public hospitals before moving to general practice and community health, I thought I understood what strain looked like in our system. I have sat through ward meetings where doctors debated who was “least sick” and could be discharged to make room for new patients who had been waiting in the emergency department for days. I have seen people essentially bedbound for months waiting for “non-urgent” elective surgeries. 
But the crisis in general practice is different—quieter, more personal, and in many ways more insidious. I’ve had patients tell me not to bother taking their blood pressure because they know it will be high, but that the ensuing discussion will mean their appointment will run over the standard consultation time and they can’t afford the extra fee. I’ve had women ask whether a follow-up appointment after a medical termination of pregnancy is really necessary, because the cost of the medication already means they’ll be short on food for the week.
These are the realities of general practice. Medicare’s promise of universal care has become increasingly hollow. A recent report from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners found that only 12 percent of GPs now bulk bill all their patients, while 40 percent bulk bill few or none. Even in Victoria, one of the better performing states, the bulk-billing rate for non-concession card holders is an abysmal 19 percent. 
It is no surprise, then, that 9 percent of Australians delayed or skipped seeing a GP because of cost in 2023–24, up from 7 percent the year before. But those figures don’t fully capture the damage. Preventive care—the invisible work of managing risk factors and detecting illness early—is what keeps people well, and reduces overall disease burden. The positive effects of this sort of care are hard to measure—the absence of disease where it might have otherwise occurred—and long term, which is also hard to quantify and politically less rewarding for governments. When people delay seeing a GP because of cost, prevention disappears from the picture. 
The Australian government’s own Department of Health and Aged Care admits that every dollar invested in preventive health saves an estimated $14.30 in future healthcare and social costs. Yet Medicare rebates have stagnated for years, pushing more and more clinics to pass costs onto patients, while those who can’t pay fall through the cracks. 
For a time, community health centres held the line. We were able to offer bulk-billed services, integrated care and enough time to address the complex needs of patients in crisis. But now even that last line of defence is being dismantled. 
In addition to the Cohealth closures, the Age reports that two more community health centres are on the brink of closure. Many more of the surrounding clinics have closed their books to new patients because they are already at capacity, with wait times of two to three weeks for an appointment. 
Part of the problem lies in the fragmented way our healthcare system is funded. The federal government funds general practice through Medicare, while public hospitals are jointly funded by federal and state governments. This creates absurd incentives. When the federal government keeps Medicare rebates low to save money, the result is more people ending up in hospital—which costs the states (and taxpayers) far more. A non-urgent emergency department visit costs over $500, compared to $42 for a GP consultation. Yet Canberra continues to starve general practice funding, leaving states to mop up the fallout.
The rollout of Urgent Care Centres is the latest example of patchwork policy masquerading as reform. These centres provide episodic, walk-in treatment for minor emergencies. They relieve some of the pressure on hospitals—but at five times the cost of a GP visit. They don’t support preventative health, continuity of care, or long-term management of chronic disease. And they further fragment and complicate the health system. 
Meanwhile, the federal government has trumpeted its new Bulk-Billing Practice Incentive Program, which began on 1 November. It offers a 12.5 percent incentive payment to clinics that bulk bill all eligible patients for certain services. On paper, it looks like progress. In practice, it’s a drop in the ocean. 
The flat 12.5 percent incentive does not scale with consultation complexity or length, incentivising short, frequent consults and penalising clinics that care for complex patients. Many community health services also rely on a mix of bulk-billing and small private fees from those who can afford to pay. These organisations may opt out of the program to preserve this income, as the incentive payment may not offset the loss from private billings.
The government claims these changes will increase the number of fully bulk-billing practices to around 4,800 by 2029, with 90 percent of visits bulk billed by 2030. However, an analysis conducted by the healthcare accessibility organisation Cleanbill suggests that the real number of new fully bulk-billing clinics is likely to be closer to 740. So far, according to the government’s own figures, only 622 of the 4720 metropolitan practices have expressed interest in changing from mixed billing to the new bulk-billing system, despite months of government campaigning. 
The deep sense of anger and betrayal from the communities of Fitzroy, Collingwood and Kensington has been palpable. Hundreds have flooded mass meetings to voice their outrage, directed at the Labor government and the Cohealth board in equal measure. The people here have a strong memory of what community-controlled healthcare once meant.
North Yarra Community Health, one of the precursors to Cohealth, was run by a board elected by the community: bi-monthly community meetings were attended by hundreds and interpreted into ten languages. Annual general meetings were held in tents, not boardrooms.
When North Yarra merged with Western Region Health and Doutta Galla to become Cohealth, that democratic model was dismantled. The board became incorporated, community membership was abolished, and decision-making drifted away from those it affected most. The current crisis is a direct outcome of that shift. Today, unelected board members can decide to close clinics, terminate staff and sell off community assets without answering to the people affected.
This fight is about more than one organisation. Australia’s public health system is at breaking point. Hospitals are overflowing, ambulance ramping has become routine, and exhausted healthcare workers are being pushed to their limit. Every year brings new promises of reform, yet the underlying issues—underfunding, privatisation, and the widening gap between rich and poor—remain untouched.
If governments are serious about fixing the system, they must start with the basics: guaranteeing access to healthcare for all, fully funding preventive and community health services and returning control of those services to the people they serve. We must end the profiteering that treats health care as a commodity and rebuild a universal public health system—one in which healthcare is free, accessible and guaranteed as a human right for every person. 
On Saturday 8 November, community members and healthcare workers will rally outside the office of federal Labor MP Sarah Witty to demand just that—immediate intervention by the Victorian and federal governments to stop the Cohealth closures with no interruption to services, as well as a commitment to a public, fully-funded community health system—free, universal and democratically controlled by the communities it serves.

Shaday Wheatley

Community health centre closures must be stopped

When Victoria Police Commander Wayne Cheeseman huffed into his media conference on 19 October, armed with a box of rocks allegedly thrown by anti-fascist protesters, he engaged in a piece of theatre intended to malign anti-racists and praise far-right protesters. Cheeseman was also doing his bit for the wider campaign, supported by the Melbourne City Council, the Liberal Party and the mainstream media, to crack down on protests in Melbourne. 
That day, there had been two opposing rallies in the city centre. One was a far-right protest, attended by angry, racist nationalists waving flags and demanding an end to immigration. This protest was led and addressed by Matt Trihey, a member of the National Workers Alliance, a fascistic organisation with links to the Nazi National Socialist Network. A similar protest a few weeks before had ended in violent attacks on Camp Sovereignty, an Indigenous protest camp in a city park.
The other demonstration was an anti-racist counter-march. It involved at least 1,500 people marching against nationalism and white supremacy, the vast, vast majority of whom did so entirely peacefully. The police chose to target their fire on just one of these protests. 
Cheeseman ranted and raved at his press conference, about “issue-motivated groups” (left-wing people who are opposed to racism), and praised the far right who “protested by example”. This celebration of the well-behaved racists gave a predictable boost to the far right, some of whom called on social media for Cheeseman to become mayor. 
The mainstream media amplified the police commander’s calls, building on many months of campaigning about the need to restore “order” in the city. Chip Le Grand, political writer for the Age, quoted beleaguered business owners as part of his argument for scrapping democratic rights: “Prominent restaurant owner Chris Lucas wants the CBD to be declared protest-free for the rest of the year. While this would temporarily impinge on the right to assembly guaranteed by Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, it would protect the countervailing rights of business owners, residents and ordinary visitors to the city”. 
The reality is that this anti-protest campaign was under way well before the anti-racist protest over the weekend. Cheeseman was saying what most of the establishment were already thinking, and some doing. Rock throwing and other counterproductive tactics simply gave the police and their allies more authority to pursue it. 
Their real gripe is the Palestine movement, remarkable in its scope, depth and longevity, and which has organised weekly rallies in Melbourne throughout Israel’s stepped-up genocide. This show of internationalism and solidarity against Western-backed violence is part of what had motivated the far right to organise. And it has been the catalyst for the authorities, in particular the Melbourne City Council, to call for restrictions on the right to protest, such as exist in New South Wales. The permit system there gives police the ability to veto the right to demonstrate, and while activists can sometimes overturn this in court, it requires access to lawyers and costs time and money, which left-wing activists often don’t have. 
Already, the Melbourne City Council has approved a plan to request state and federal governments to restrict protest rights in the city. This would <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-20/city-of-melbourne-councillors-vote-amendment-protest-disruption/105674980">include</a>
altering the routes of protests, moving them to parks or “stronger police intervention to minimise disruption”. 
Brad Battin, the Liberal leader, has likewise called for limits on the right to protest. Battin has pledged to introduce a permit system if the Liberals are elected at the coming state election. A Liberal press statement has Battin saying, “Under a government I lead, law abiding citizens will be prioritised ahead of those who seek to disrupt the activities of Victorians or endanger public safety”. The Liberals sleight of hand includes discussing protests and demonstrations in the same breath as machete crime and gang violence. 
Premier Jacinta Allen has so far resisted calls for a permit system, but her government has introduced other laws restricting protests. These include harsher penalties for people who lock on or glue themselves to surfaces—things that mainly environmental and anti-war activists engage in. 
Whatever happens, we have to defend the right to protest. We can’t let the very forces we are often protesting against take away our ability to challenge them. And we can’t let profit making for city businesses trump democratic rights. The best way to uphold and defend the right to protest is to keep getting out and protesting, and to make it impossible for the authorities to stop us.

‘We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas’: Labor turns blind eye to Melbourne’s 100,000 empty homes

Locking up kids shows Victoria’s treaty is for show

Community pressure wins reprieve on health clinic closures

Community health centre closures must be stopped

Cops huff and media puff—we need to defend the right to protest in Melbourne

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