Affordable Housing

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (12:52): I move:

That this house—

(a) notes that South Australia is experiencing a severe housing crisis, with increasing numbers of citizens unable to secure affordable housing due to insufficient housing development, escalating costs and a lack of effective government intervention;

(b) condemns the Malinauskas Labor government for its failure to set clear targets for housing development, skilled workforce recruitment and construction materials planning to address this crisis, despite the national Housing Accord goal of building 1.2 million homes over five years, with South Australia expected to contribute 84,000 homes;

(c) recognises that the absence of these critical targets leaves South Australia unprepared to meet housing demands, impacting both affordability and accessibility and undermining the construction industry’s confidence in the government’s commitment to solving the housing shortage; and

(d) calls on the Malinauskas Labor government to implement an actionable and transparent plan that includes:

i. defined targets for annual housing construction from 2024-25 through 2028-29;

ii. strategic recruitment goals for skilled construction workers to meet housing needs;

iii. a detailed construction materials plan to secure the supply of essential materials like concrete, sand and aggregates, which are vital for housing and other infrastructure projects; and

iv. a roadmap to address delays in key housing projects, such as the Seaton renewal program, the Build-to-Rent initiative and public housing maintenance.

It is fair to say that this area in housing is an area where the Malinauskas Labor government are exposed. There has been a lot of hot air, and there has been a lot of political spin. There have been a lot of PowerPoints, consultants and a range of other presentations. This really comes to an issue with Labor governments generally, which we saw exposed through the years of the Weatherill government, where the primary focus is always on inputs and nothing to do with outputs.

We have a government that has, at every turn in regard to housing, found a way to ensure that they are not putting themselves on the hook for any form of responsibility or target. That is in spite of the federal government's Housing Accord that has been well and truly aerated. Certainly, there is no confidence from the construction industry, and perhaps I can be so bold as to say from most Australians, that those targets are going to be met.

At least Anthony Albanese had the fortitude to put a target out to the world, to hold the industry to account and to provide some sort of target and timeline. But no, not this government; they could not possibly provide themselves with a target, something that they would perhaps need to achieve. It has quite simply been a moving feast of announcements, of walking back and of changing the goalposts.

This really started in the early days of the government trying to address this issue. If we look back at the land release announcement, the releases at Dry Creek, Concordia, Hackham and Sellicks Beach were announced by the Premier in February 2023, which is now nearly two years ago. It became pretty evident, not just this to this government and not just to the construction industry in South Australia, that there was a rather large oversight that the Premier had missed in regard to this proposal, whether that was because of the hasty nature of the way in which it was prepared or perhaps that there was more work effort put into the PowerPoints and the media strategy than what was actually being announced. As it turns out, if you want to release land you need water infrastructure. Nobody had even asked SA Water, it appears, whether there was the capacity in the forward plans to be able to accommodate these land releases.

We then saw the government release, in six to eight months, their Housing Roadmap—another jazz hands to shift the focus away from what was announced just earlier in the year; the new shiny object that we can now fascinate ourselves with.

Even within those Housing Roadmap announcements there still remain only questions. There are 30,000 new skilled training spaces in the construction industry. How many will there be per year? We do not know. How are they going to be achieved? We do not know. If you look back to the very first announcement of the land releases, the question that the government still has not been able to answer, both in this house and in the public forums more generally, is: will the government have a single house built on any of those land releases in this term of government?

The minister is here, and I am happy to hear from him if he wishes to interject. I know it is disorderly, but we are happy to hear his answer about whether there is going to be a single house built on those land releases in this term of government. It does appear that, to this point, the government's achievements in this space have largely been on the back of decisions that were taken by the former Marshall government.

The building sites that have been featured in press releases, to this point, by this government—let us give some examples to the house. The 1,000 affordable homes for first-home buyers, Prospect Corner, the Seaton development, Park Court, the Villawood Oakden development, Nightingale Bowden, the MAB development at Bowden, Aldinga, the YWCA development at Hutt Street, Oaklands Green and the Aboriginal Elders Village—all of these decisions.

Again, no amount of political spin and no number of media releases are actually going to build houses and, at the end of the day, that is what the people of South Australia will hold this government to account for. The minister can answer the question—he can feel free to do so now: will a single house be built on those land releases in this term of government? We have our suspicions and the people of South Australia have theirs; it is up to the minister to provide an answer.

Debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.