Parliament of Victoria | Legislative Council | Second Reading speech
9 September 2026
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan Region):
As you drive around the outskirts of Melbourne’s west, or indeed just about anywhere in Melbourne’s outer metropolitan area, you’d be hard-pressed to find an empty field without a large billboard advertising a pristine master planned community with all the bells and whistles and lifestyle. Welcome to your new home. New estates are springing up everywhere. As I’ve said in this place before, ‘Stand still in the west for about 40 minutes, and they’ll build around you.’ The billboards are all essentially selling the same thing: the dream of home ownership – a dream which is becoming increasingly harder to achieve.
Somewhere between the billboard going up and the homes being built, the dream turns into a reality that is far different to what buyers had envisaged. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told, ‘I came here, I was promised all of these fabulous things as part of the lifestyle of this development, and they’ve not been delivered.’
Residents of Mount Atkinson bought into the dream woven by Stockland. Who can blame them when the marketing promised a future town centre – and not just any town centre – a Westfield shopping and community precinct? But that’s not all. The master plan contained further proposed amenities such as a retail, business and commercial precinct, two primary schools, a secondary school, an indoor recreation centre, a community centre, a community activity centre, a sports and recreation precinct, a local convenience store, and a train station.
The reality for those residents is that accessing even the most basic essentials – a loaf of bread, a carton of milk, a roll of toilet paper – requires a 40-minute round trip. Out of that long list of proposed amenities, only the primary schools have been delivered, nine years after they were first marketed. After years of living in the estate, thousands of residents are eagerly awaiting the construction of a single convenience store. As one resident told ABC News last year, ‘The vision is so far from reality.’ Some residents paid up to $60,000 more to be located close to this non-existent town centre.
Stockland continued to pursue these proximity premiums right up until Westfield publicly pulled the pin on Mount Atkinson in September 2024, which begs the question: when did Stockland know that the shopping centre would not be proceeding as promised? Because they were still selling premium properties up to that point. And there’s a double whammy. Purchasers who have held off building their dream homes because they doubted the developer’s intent to deliver the promised community facilities are now furious to find they are being hit with the vacant land tax.
Just a few kilometres from Mount Atkinson is Bridgefield, Rockbank, developed by 3L Alliance and Goldfields. More than 20 groups of prospective buyers camped out to snap up a block of land in the first release. A major selling point of this estate was ‘Club Bridgefield’, which was promised to include a swimming pool, tennis courts – plural – a gym, a residents’ lounge and function room. The pictures in the brochure look like something out of a Port Douglas resort. Originally sold as common space owned by the owner’s corporations, the club was instead owned by the developer and leased to the owners corporation at $835,000 per annum. As fewer residents agreed to pay for this Temu version of the club, fees continued to rise until it closed its doors.
Allura Estate in Truganina was pitched to buyers as a future suburban hub. Glossy brochures depicted a bustling town centre, along with schools and everyday amenities. Buyers were also told Allura would be a secure, gated community, until council knocked back the installation of cameras on public property, so that was a nonstarter. Like Mount Atkinson, many buyers paid a premium to be close to the action, so that shops, services and public transport would be just a stone’s throw away. Several years after the first residents moved in, Empire Property acquired the estate from original developers Stockland. Their first order of business? Halving the size of the town centre and filling the remaining area with medium- and high-density housing.
These case studies are just a handful of many, all within 10 kilometres of each other. So, imagine how many more are out there just like them. The promises these developers made were at best, speculative; at worst, misleading. When questioned about Allura in 2023, then Premier Daniel Andrews said, ‘Those developers say one thing to guarantee the sale and then deliver something very different to guarantee profits. That’s fundamentally wrong.’ He said he was very concerned by the matter and that the government would look at it closely.
In September 2024 I raised an adjournment on the issue of Mount Atkinson, and in her response, the then minister, Gabby Williams, said she had referred the matter to Consumer Affairs Victoria. Resident advocate groups from all over the west have met with previous ministers for consumer affairs Danny Pearson and Nick Staikos. On every occasion, the same promise is made: ‘We will look into this. Consumer affairs will look into this.’ Those promises are also yet to be delivered. Members might be beginning to detect a theme at this point.
For decades, successive governments have let property developers get away with blue murder, throwing consumers under the bus. Although that’s not strictly true, because in far too many new estates, one of the missing deliverables is, of course, a bus. This is the end result of successive governments’ over-reliance on developers to deliver greenfield housing. These companies do not strive for community building, for livability, but are singularly focused on one thing: delivering profits to their shareholders.
In so many areas of consumer law, there’s a well-established precedent that if a business makes a representation about a product, they must have reasonable grounds for doing so. If they don’t have reasonable grounds, and the consumer has incurred a loss as a result, then avenues of redress are usually available to them. Unfortunately, these protections do not appear to be working for the thousands of Victorians who have been dudded by developers.
The regulations are clearly not working. We have overlapping legislative frameworks across state, federal, local government and common law, but the net result is that there are no protections for consumers against ‘snake-oil salesman’ developers. Developers, estate agents and other vendors all have responsibilities under the Sale of Land Act 1996. Those responsibilities, however, say little in regard to providing adequate information when it comes to advertising future amenities.
There is currently no Victorian requirement that a developer who markets a future amenity, such as a shopping centre, or a school, or a train station, must disclose:
- whether funding has been secured;
- whether approvals exist;
- who controls delivery;
- whether a contract exists;
- whether any work has actually commenced.
Nor is there currently any specific statutory disclosure regime aimed at large master planned estates where future amenities form a significant part of the sales proposition.
Whether it’s enforcing existing laws or introducing new, tighter laws, something must be done. These people need to be protected. This bill is not by any means a silver bullet; we simply seek to demonstrate that government needs to step up, and that there are a range of mechanisms available for it to do so. Among them is precinct structure plan reform, which would likely require a lot more buy-in from government.
The bill does not require developers to deliver any particular facility or service. It does not enforce timelines for constructing amenities, nor does it prohibit the depiction of future amenities in marketing material or other representations; it simply requires that information provided to purchasers regarding future infrastructure is factual and capable of objective verification. Put simply, it ensures that developers cannot hide behind marketing buzzwords like ‘future’ or ‘coming soon’ when it comes to the contract of the sale of land.
Moving now to the key provisions of the bill. Clause 4 inserts new definitions, including ‘subdivision development’, which covers large residential subdivisions of more than 1500 lots where planning documents indicate facilities such as schools, transport, shopping, health, sporting or community facilities may be provided.
Clause 5 sets out a requirement that vendors in those large subdivision developments disclose in the section 32 statement whether proposed facilities actually exist, who is responsible for providing them, what approvals, contracts or funding are in place and gives purchasers a right to rescind the sale if the information proves to be misleading.
Clause 6 creates a right for purchasers to sue the vendor for damages if false or misleading information about those services or facilities was provided in the section 32 statement, including after settlement if the purchaser later discovers the information was misleading.
These provisions aim to hold the sale of land in a major estate to a much higher standard than currently exists. This is about helping consumers make informed decisions. When a big developer builds an estate with thousands of dwellings, they are effectively responsible for creating a new community, a mini suburb. Future amenities are critical to the value proposition of these developments and materially impact the buyer’s decisions.
We simply believe that the contract of sale should accurately represent what they are actually selling and give prospective buyers the full picture. After all, we’re not talking about buying a scratchie or a raffle ticket; we are talking about people’s life savings, possibly the biggest investment they will ever make and their future. Buyers deserve to have every confidence that the information they are being provided by the vendor is clear, correct, and verifiable.
This is a modest bill with a targeted outcome. Put simply, if a developer promises something, and it’s not delivered, there should be redress. No more Mount Atkinson rip-offs. No more Bridgefield rip-offs. No more Allura rip-offs. I commend the bill to the house.
