National Housing Accord

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:08): My question again is to the Premier. Does the Premier have a target for the skilled workforce required in South Australia to build the required number of new homes and, if not, why not? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: At the Economic and Finance Committee meeting of 12 September representatives from the Department of State Development revealed that there are no targets for the number of skilled construction workers.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:08): Again, the government has just committed to coming up with arbitrary numbers. I remember a government in the past that committed to a range of targets that didn't result in much actual policy effort or endeavour. What we are delivering—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Leader, quiet! And the member for Flinders!

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: What we are committed to is actual policy endeavour to make a difference. Let me speak to some of those reforms that this government is making. The first one, of course, is what we are doing around technical colleges. This government is building five technical colleges. The Minister for Education, Training and Skills has already overseen—

The Hon. D.G. Pisoni: They've gone backwards! What number?

The SPEAKER: Member for Unley! Final warning.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: The Minister for Education, Training and Skills has already opened up one of those technical colleges—

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

The SPEAKER: The deputy leader will come to order.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: Then, of course, there is the provision of fee-free TAFE here in South Australia, which has seen a massive increase in the number of people getting access to our public training provider, because we believe in the public training provider. Then, of course, we have worked closely with the Master Builders Association to provide them assistance and support through their group training provider. We have also worked on other programs that are allocating funds and resources, like the Born to Build program, which has us working in conjunction with the Master Builders Association to be out in schools and explaining the virtues of young people being able to choose a career in construction trades. So whether it be through TAFE, whether it be through GTOs, whether it be through efforts that we provide in schools or whether it be us actually building—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: What's the target though? How many?

The SPEAKER: Deputy leader! One more peep and you are out until the end of question time. You have interrupted four or five times in the past minute when I have called you to order.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: These are serious policy efforts that are being funded by the budget to actually increase the number of people who are doing the work on the ground that is required to build more homes. We stand ready to not just recite all the policy that we have already introduced but we are continuously, as a government, looking for options about how we can stimulate the supply of houses. We have the demand and we want to make sure that supply increases.

One of the big pieces of work that the government is now working on, because it is a sustained and ongoing effort, is the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan that the Minister for Housing is working on. The minister has released the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan out for public consultation and an enormous effort has been put into making sure that we recalibrate the policy to reflect the growth that we are seeing in South Australia. We have changed the policy that is orientating all the effort exclusively on infill to actually accommodate the fact that we do believe urban growth has a role to play.

We believe that people, particularly young South Australians, should be afforded a choice: being able to choose to live in a high or medium-density environment, or being able to choose to live in a home with a backyard in a community that has access to services to be able to enjoy a decent standard of living. We are all about providing choice to first-home buyers. We are about making sure that we are planning for the long term, including on infrastructure questions—which the GARP effort very much goes to—because the one ideology that we are approaching this with, above all others, is giving young people a chance of owning a home, to be able to realise their aspirations and do it at an affordable price point in a timely manner, and we will not stop until we believe the work is done.