Build Housing at Stations

VicTrack, Victoria's fourth-largest landowner, owns the land and buildings at approximately 227 Metropolitan train stations and around 82 V/Line regional stations. Across roughly 309 stations, the state's own open data counts approximately 40,008 dedicated parking spaces covering around 51 hectares. The predominant use of station-adjacent land is surface car parking, which is the lowest-value classification a piece of land near a train station can carry. RMIT University's 2019 walkability research found that middle-suburban stations including Bentleigh, Murrumbeena, Mentone, Preston and Reservoir already had the underlying structure to support transit-oriented development but were not built that way. The state's own 2025 activity centre rezoning program targets 300,000 new homes around 60 activity centres by 2051, which is itself an admission that most station areas are under-built.

VicTrack's current commercial development model is to sell or lease development rights to private developers for a one-off payment, rather than retaining the asset and collecting rent indefinitely. The Gardiner station sale is the documented case: VicTrack has not disclosed what it received for the land, and an independent analysis flagged that non-disclosure. VWHF's mandate replaces this model: VWHF builds on station-adjacent land, retains the asset, and collects the rent. This requires VicTrack's head-lease arrangement with the state to be amended to allow VWHF to build above, around, and on VicTrack land, and requires the Planning and Environment Act 1987 to designate station precincts within 1 km as Transit Development Districts with automatic height and density bonuses. The 20% mandatory inclusionary zoning rule applies within these TDDs: 10% to Homes Victoria as permanent public housing, 10% as long-term affordable rental.

The Development Facilitation Program's existing 10% affordable housing requirement has a 3% cash buyout option. That buyout has raised barely $12 million statewide. The 50% height and density bonus offered in Transit Development Districts is set above what a 3% buyout covers, specifically to make physical inclusion cheaper than the cash-out option. VWHF builds at cost, with no developer margin, no marketing budget, and no shareholder return, which means it can price housing slightly below market and still service its Social Infrastructure Bonds. The Windfall Gains Tax, at up to 50% on rezoning uplift with a 62.5% marginal rate in the $100,000-$500,000 taper band, captures the value increase from rezoning at the moment of change. The Transit Capital Fund's cumulative surcharge captures the ongoing appreciation of commercial land that does not develop after rezoning.

The crowding-out risk: independent US research puts private market displacement at roughly one unit lost for every two to three public units built in the same market. Fusion's response is that the current public baseline in transit precincts is zero new public units, so even a one-for-two displacement ratio produces a net gain. The enshittification risk (see the VWHF enshittification section in the policy library) is that amenity degrades as VWHF scales and budget pressure accumulates, the same pattern as LXRP's early-to-late station quality differential. VWHF's enabling legislation must mandate whole-of-life costing as a statutory requirement, not guidance, and tie management incentives to long-run portfolio performance rather than capex variance.

Hong Kong's MTR Rail+Property model has been operating continuously since 1980, with approximately 40% of MTR's total revenue derived from property rather than fares as of the mid-2010s. MTR receives development rights over station-adjacent land at pre-rail value, develops the land or sells rights in exchange for a share of the profit, and uses property income to fund network expansion without ongoing operating subsidy. Singapore's HDB, at approximately 80% of the resident population housed in HDB flats with roughly 90% of HDB households owning on a 99-year lease, demonstrates that a state developer building at cost can operate at a scale that sets terms for the entire private housing market. VicTrack's own documented examples, Glen Waverley Town Square, Jewell, Hampton Quarter, the Gardiner site - all involve a one-off sale to a private developer rather than a retained income stream, confirming that the "keep the asset, lease it, collect the rent" model is genuinely absent from Victoria's current approach.

This requires a party in government to deliver: the TDD designations, the Transport Integration Act amendment, the VicTrack consolidation, and the Social Infrastructure Bond programme all need executive action and a parliamentary majority. A Fusion MP's role from one seat is to introduce the enabling legislation as a Private Member's Bill, to use supply negotiations to extract a government commitment to a feasibility study for the first five identified station-precinct sites, and to table PAEC questions requiring VicTrack to publish a station-by-station commercial leasing register so the baseline for what is currently being earned, or not earned, is on the public record. The one-seat deliverable is that publicly available baseline: a station-by-station register of VicTrack tenancy counts, vacancy rates, and lease revenue is the evidentiary foundation without which no future government can be held accountable for how poorly it is doing on the status quo.