Jacinta Allan finally sets her own agenda.

After months of dithering on issues such as youth crime and health funding, the prime minister has shifted the political debate to housing.

Allan this week outlined a vision for bolder apartment development in established suburbs and dedicating vast tracts of greenfield land for 180,000 homes on Melbourne’s outskirts.

The package of housing policies – stamp duty reductions, new planning rules and land releases – are not without challenges. The industry has warned that there are some problems and that many ideas require more detail and development.

But what these policies do is sell a message of hope to hundreds of thousands of Victorians who are struggling to afford housing.

Much of politics is about selling hope and the idea of ​​a better future.

The challenge for Allan is that after a decade of Labor rule, Victorians will need to see concrete results from his housing plan. He cannot be satisfied with optimism.

The Prime Minister knows housing reform is difficult, but she knows something has to be done.

His political fortunes depend on it.

“There will be blockers. We know who they are and we know their greatest weapon: fear,” she told the Melbourne Press Club on Thursday.

“I consider this the fight of my life.”

A war against the “blockers” framing the Labor Party’s fight for a fourth term

The latest poll shows Labor on the nose. Ten years in office and a series of political problems saw Labor’s vote decline.

Allan is facing the reality of losing the next election – but it’s not until November 2026. That leaves plenty of time to right the ship and Labor is trying to reframe the housing debate.

The prime minister’s speech this week appealed to ambitious young homeowners, moving away from a decades-old conventional policy strategy aimed at attracting older homeowners.

Former senior adviser to Allan’s predecessor Daniel Andrews, Jessie McCrone, told ABC Radio Melbourne a fall in Victoria’s house prices was the result of years of work by Labor.

“Victoria is already having an impact on house prices because of things like property taxes, because of things like planning changes. And if the government doesn’t get a hold of these things, they will be blamed for it.” , she said.

“People have been calling for this kind of change for some time to make housing more affordable and not just an investment.

The implementation of the Prime Minister’s plan, with daily news, kept the political debate on its terms and the issue was constantly in the news.

If this had all been announced as one package, much of it would have been lost.

And the Prime Minister couldn’t have asked for a better response when she launched a plan for apartment towers in the wealthy bayside suburb of Brighton on Sunday.

The scenes of local Liberal MP James Newbury and a crowd of angry residents seething at the thought of more people living in their area was exactly what Labor wanted.

He described liberals as NIMBYs and “blockers” to housing development, a term you’ll hear frequently from Allan.

This was the kind of class warfare that Daniel Andrews was so adept at. But this strategy is not without risk.

Imposing large developments on otherwise low-density heritage suburbs has already raised concerns over local amenity and infrastructure.

The Liberal Party is ready to fight and firmly believes that the Prime Minister has made a serious mistake, predicting similar negative reactions in most of the 50 development activity centers.

“Jacinta Allan is preying on some communities and it looks like she has a bad streak,” said shadow planning minister and Brighton MP James Newbury.

Newbury said the community as a whole wants to buy a bigger house, not an apartment.

“The Prime Minister did not announce a housing policy, she announced her population policy,” he said.

Labor is not bothered that the Liberals and Greens might oppose developments aimed at appeasing local communities.

This is because Labor is not looking for these votes in micro-communities. He wants Victorians everywhere to be energized by the prospect of buying a home, wherever they want to live.

It is hoped the plans will appeal to older residents who want their children – and grandchildren – to also be able to afford to live nearby, eliminating any fears of an eight-story tower destroying the community.

The government has left the door open to an alarmist campaign by claiming that towers of up to 20 storeys are possible.

This could have been more nuanced for each community; he says this will happen through local consultations.

Labor shortages and developer concerns among hurdles to overcome

But the biggest challenge for Labor is to turn this plan, this hope, into concrete realities.

And there is already a lot of concern about whether the projects can be carried out.

Developers want a return on investment. Some have already raised concerns that the current climate is not worth investing in. Developers want apartment prices to rise, not fall.

The sector is also struggling to find workers, with labor shortages driving up costs.

The government contributed to the overheating of the labor market by embarking on an ambitious infrastructure program, thereby increasing pressure on housing construction. He is relentless and unapologetic about his massive infrastructure agenda.

And the government’s new plans are not yet fully developed.

For example, a change to make it easier to subdivide blocks is not yet detailed and will be resolved next year.

Businesses located around activity centers earmarked for the new towers could also face new taxes. Rezoning land around these new centers of activity will result in windfall tax burdens on unsuspecting local businesses under the state tax regime.

Asked about windfall taxes on activity centers, the government said: “If there are any unique, unintended consequences, we will look at them.”

RMIT planning expert Michael Buxton told the ABC there was no doubt the government would need to rezone the land to allow redevelopment, which would trigger the windfall tax.

“The government needs to be very clear about this very quickly, because there is a lot of uncertainty. But the real estate sector is certainly preparing for it. They are expecting this increased value to be applied,” the professor said Buxton.

“A lot of people are going to be hit by this tax if this is done. And I think it will have to be done, because the government is going to rezone all of this land.”

This is just a hidden challenge in Jacinta Allan’s grand plan.

Allan’s so-called Housing Week gave her a backdrop to develop her own agenda, one that takes her out of the shadow of Daniel Andrews.

This is hopeful, but there are still many more details to examine.

This will be a major political fight that will dominate the years to come.

Can she build it?

As the Prime Minister said, this is the fight of her life and she is leading the charge.