Housing Supply

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:29): My question is to the Premier. Has the Premier broken his promise to deliver enough homes for South Australians? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: Over the past year, just over 12,500 dwellings were completed across South Australia, nearly 3½ thousand short of the approximately 16,000 homes per year needed to stay on track. Dwelling commencements for SA fell sharply in the June 2025 quarter, by around 13 per cent.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier, Minister for Defence and Space Industries) (14:29): I always enjoy when the Leader of the Opposition decides to talk about housing because it invites consideration of where we've come from, where we're at and where we're heading. Let's start at where we've come from. We have come from a situation where there were a range of policy decisions, which I don't—

The Hon. V.A. Tarzia interjecting:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: Well, if you would maybe—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: The rate and pace of interjections from the Leader of the Opposition speak to a new level of desperation, but let's just look at it. What I was about to say before being interrupted by the Leader of the Opposition was that in terms of where we're coming from, we—because we have the capacity to have objectivity of analysis—will acknowledge that there was a range of decisions taken across not just the former Liberal government but also the former Labor government before that that contributed to a constraint on supply that we think has held back housing growth. When we think about policy settings of land release and investment in water infrastructure, not enough has been done over the course of the last 10 and 20 years, which has led to the problem that we are now in. That is just the truth of it.

So how do we respond to that challenge? As a government, we have to acknowledge what has gone wrong in the past—not just the former Liberal government but the former Labor government before that—and seek to rise to the challenge. The first thing we have decided to tackle is water infrastructure, gross underinvestment in water infrastructure, because the former Labor government was taking dividends out of SA Water for the purposes of the budget and the former Liberal government decided to chase votes and cut water prices at the expense of putting pipes in the ground.

So what have we done? We've made the tough decisions to generate the revenue that is required for SA Water—from the budget, from developers and also from bill payers—to then get trunk water infrastructure in the ground. If you drive out into the northern suburbs, which I'm not too sure too many members opposite would ever do, you will see pipe going—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Human Services and the member for Florey are on their final warnings.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: I say to my friend the member for Florey that I don't think it's fair to go back over the hard work that the member for Hammond was doing at Glen Osmond on Christmas Day a few years ago. The water infrastructure going into the ground to make a difference, the land releases that we have delivered, planning reform activity that we make, code amendments being undertaken, acquisition activity, investment in strategic infill, the abolition of stamp duty for new builds—not demand generation, supply generation—these are the policies that have now got housing growth at the fastest rates in South Australia that we have ever seen, including the fastest rates of growth in the country. That's what we've delivered.

What will you deliver? You're going to deliver more demand. That's your plan: more demand. Our plan is more supply and we're very excited to prosecute that difference at the election.