Public Housing

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (14:47): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. How many vacant public housing properties have been upgraded under Labor? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr TELFER: The Labor 2022 policy commitment was to upgrade 350 houses that currently sit empty.

The Hon. N.F. COOK (Hurtle Vale—Minister for Human Services) (14:47): I don't have the number for today but I believe the number out of the 350 commitment is somewhere around 80-odd. I will just remind members what the program commitment included, because that is one component of it. There were close to 200 properties empty at a point of time within the previous government. Our empty properties now sit in the 1,600s.

We know that there is a huge demand on housing generally and I and the Minister for Housing and Urban Development, the Treasurer, and the Minister for Small and Family Business are working at pace to deliver a program that will provide us with more homes—nearly 1,150 actually—than would have been under the Liberal government, had they stayed in. We stopped the sale and then invested at the start to build—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. N.F. COOK: We stopped the sales that were baked into—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Morialta is warned. The minister has the call.

The Hon. N.F. COOK: We have stopped the sales that were baked—

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Florey!

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Minister.

The Hon. N.F. COOK: We have stopped the sales of public houses that were baked into the forward estimates by the previous government. Along with—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. N.F. COOK: No, the Marshall government—

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Florey!

The Hon. N.F. COOK: Long may it go into the—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. N.F. COOK: I know you have forgotten.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. N.F. COOK: Everybody else has forgotten too, thank goodness.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Member for West Torrens! Member for Florey!

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Morialta!

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Minister, you have the call.

The Hon. N.F. COOK: There were sales that were baked into the forward estimates by the state Liberal government. It took us some time and a great deal of effort to actually change the dial on that, to turn that around, to stop that happening, and in total where it's around 580 plus 564, if I remember the numbers correctly, it will deliver an increase of 1,144 on the estimate that would have been there had you stayed in. Now, we are really pleased that that has—Mr Speaker, I know you have left the dark side. It's not you. It's via you to over here—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. N.F. COOK: The dark side.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. N.F. COOK: Yes. It is. It's great news. So we have made a commitment to increase public housing, and that is what we are doing. The number of builds is increasing exponentially because of the effort now being put in not just by the state government but the federal government where we have the Social Housing Accelerator program that needs to be committed to and spent over the next couple of the years, and we will see hundreds of homes as a result.

Then also after that we have that next pipeline due to the Housing Australia Future Fund. It means that we, as a Labor government, can do what governments should be doing and that is investing in public housing. I understand us to be nearly a quarter of the way through on that commitment already, and about 180, which is around about a third of the way through, on the new builds in terms of them being contracted, under construction or completed.