Grievance Debate

Housing Affordability

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (15:05): What we need from this government is less lip-service and more slabs. That is what we need and that is not what we are getting at the moment. Today the pre-eminent peak body for property in the state, the Property Council, released a report which paints a grim picture of the housing crisis in this state. In the words of the Property Council, affordable housing in South Australia is simply beyond reach. Adelaide now is the least affordable capital city in all of Australia in which to rent a home. When you look at home ownership it is the second-least affordable capital city to buy a home, only now behind Sydney.

The Property Council's report shows that the median house price in Adelaide is 10.1 times the median household income—10.1. Key workers, the very workers that we need to build homes, to keep our streets safe, to provide health care, and to care for our children, cannot afford to live in Adelaide at the moment. Was it not astonishing that when we asked the Premier today how he would recruit key workers to help build these homes in South Australia we got inadequate answers.

When we asked the minister the most basic of questions, that is: how many additional construction apprentices and trainees have commenced since the release of the Housing Roadmap, guess what, sir? He chewed up four minutes and he could not even provide an answer. What an embarrassment—an absolute joke. We got no answer as to what he is going to do in terms of helping to fix the crisis and how these workers are actually going to get homes in South Australia.

How is the Premier going to build thousands of houses within our state when the workers that we need to build these homes cannot afford to live here? It is as simple as that. The Property Council found that a household comprising a full-time sparky and a part-time retail assistant could not afford to buy a property across many of the suburbs that were surveyed. It also found that a police officer on a single income is effectively locked out of buying a median-priced house or unit or even renting a home. How do we address the police recruitment and retention crisis in this state when effectively some of our police cannot even afford to live here?

For 19 of the past 23 years, Labor have been the architects of our planning system, and their failures have been laid out for all to see today. We know that South Australians are paying the price now for the incompetence of former and current Labor governments. They are literally charging South Australians for the lack of SA Water infrastructure. Who knows exactly what additional fees they are going to charge us for what is next. How much of the cost will be passed on to the private sector? How will this, in turn, turn up house prices for South Australians?

South Australian living standards are going backwards under this government. It is clearly out of touch. This became apparent this morning when we heard the housing minister on the ABC revealing that his latest encounter with someone in need of affordable housing was his former cleaner's son. It does suggest that the member should actually go out into his electorate and spend a bit more time there asking about what real people in the northern suburbs are actually experiencing.

The opposition wants to see more houses built in South Australia but we need to know what the government is going to do now, not what are they going to do in 20 years' time. What are they going to do now? What we see are a lot of shiny announcements. This Premier loves the big stage and he loves a big announcement. There is one thing he does not like doing and that is keeping his promises on ramping, on hydrogen, and now on housing as well. If they cannot deliver any homes in two years on the blocks that we spoke about, how will they deliver the grand plans—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: —almost three years—announced over the weekend, and what faith can we have in their ability to deliver anything given their track record? We know that this is a government that is all talk. We have seen it with ramping, we have seen it with energy and now we are seeing it with housing as well.

We called on the government to expand the concessions around stamp duty for first-home buyers. We remain one of the only states that do not offer these concessions on existing homes. The Property Council has also identified that reducing housing and development taxes is one of the key factors in improving housing affordability in our state, so what is the government doing about it? South Australians cannot afford to wait 20 years. We cannot afford to lose more critical workers from our state.

We know workforce shortages are one of the critical challenges in our housing crisis, yet I cannot see if this government even has workforce targets. So it is time for this government to deliver on the essentials and get back to basics, which includes affordable housing and affordable power. We are three years into their four-year term and they have not done either.