National Housing Accord

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (14:32): My question is to the Minister for Planning. Is the government taking action to ensure that South Australia can meet the National Housing Accord targets, and if so, what? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr TELFER: The National Housing Accord target for South Australia is to build 83,230 new homes over a five-year period from mid 2024. Data released by Master Builders Australia this week suggests that South Australia will underperform this target by more than 27,000 homes or 33 per cent.

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Trade and Investment, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Planning) (14:32): I thank the member for his question and it's an important one. We all know that the building industry is coming off what was known as the profitless boom where we built 14,000 homes and apartments in the state but the businesses operating in that area, the builders, made very little profit because of the disruption in supply chains and the like. As a result, we are having something of a hangover from that boom period.

We all know that housing supply is the answer and planning plays a reasonably vital role in the longer term to providing that supply. I just point out to the member that the Business Council of Australia says that we have the best planning system in the country. There are many other jurisdictions, like Western Australia, that are going to move towards the type of planning system that we have. We have a single planning code across the state. We have a single system, which people can log into. It is very user friendly.

There is always more reform that we will want to do. I have a government question a bit later on which will go into some of the things that we have been doing. I don't want to foreshadow it—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: Well, this is a government—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: Unlike the other side, this is a government—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: —which is very, very interested in housing—very, very interested in housing and very, very interested in housing supply. That's why we have—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: Just listen to this—90 code amendments with 4,000 hectares of land under rezoning at the moment. If you compare that—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: —to what went on previously—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Hammond!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: —we have completely blown the previous government out of the water. We have already released more land to the market than the previous government did in the entire four years you have had.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Member for Frome!

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION: We are interested in housing supply. We understand it is the critical lever to answering the housing crisis.