Public Housing, Mount Gambier

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (15:08): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. Can the Minister for Human Services please advise over the last two years how many empty public housing properties have been tenanted in the seat of Mount Gambier? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr BELL: In the 2022 state budget, funding was announced for a public housing maintenance blitz to upgrade empty public housing properties. Can the minister advise how many homes in Mount Gambier have benefited from this upgrade and are now tenanted?

The Hon. N.F. COOK (Hurtle Vale—Minister for Human Services) (15:09): Thank you to the member for Mount Gambier for the question and also for your commitment to the Mount Gambier community. I might take the opportunity as well to note that your former staff member, Kate—whom we miss—was an incredible advocate for the Mount Gambier area for improving housing, and also the circumstances of people who are homeless in the area. It is a reminder, I think, to everybody in this place how important your staff can be when you're not there, you're in parliament, particularly for regional members.

We only house people in one of two ways. We either fix up a home that is empty and allocate it to somebody after the repairs are undertaken or we build new homes so that people who need a roof over their head can get one. At the last election, we allocated $177.5 million for public housing and boosted that to $232.7 million in our first Mid-Year Budget Review. This is supporting the construction of an additional 564 homes now and major upgrades to the 350 vacant properties, which I think you're referring to, member.

When we say 'major upgrades', we're talking an average of around $70,000 per home with every upgrade, including new bathrooms, new kitchens or both, and a range of other major works. The kind of homes being upgraded are those that would otherwise have been empty for months or years, and this is in no small part because of under-investment over many years and also cuts to the service over the past four years under the Liberal government.

If an agency has major financial constraints, homes that are expensive to repair will sit empty, get bulldozed or be sold. Our investment means that is not happening. We have stopped the sale of 580 homes additionally, and this will give us nearly 1,200 additional homes over the next few years.

Thanks to your advocacy, member for Mount Gambier, we knew that people in the South-East really needed additional housing, so we are really proud that our first public housing builds in our election commitment have been built, in partnership with local builder Empak, and our extra housing investment totals more than $12 million in Mount Gambier.

That has included 10 homes worth $4.6 million, and they are now complete and tenanted. I am sure you have visited some of them. Another four homes worth $1.9 million are due to start construction next month, and we look forward to those being tenanted as soon as possible, with another eight homes going out to tender for about $3.2 million any day now.

In 2022-23, 19 homes in Mount Gambier underwent major upgrades also, and that was worth $1.27 million, and I understand they have already been tenanted. There are another 12 homes as part of that upgrade program in 2023-24, and I can advise also that nine of those are already completed and tenanted, and work is expected to be completed on another three in coming months. The average investment, as I said before, is $70,000 per home.

As part of the election commitment, we are also doing additional maintenance on tenanted homes, and there is an aim for 90 homes in Mount Gambier to be completed by the end of this financial year. It is pleasing to note that over the last two years 233 allocations for homes have happened in Mount Gambier. So the team are doing really well down there, not just bringing homes back online but supporting people into homes. It's a terrific outcome.