HomeBuilder Program

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:48): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Treasurer a question about the state government's COVID-19 stimulus package.

Leave granted.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: As has been documented in recent times, some local councils have unacceptable reputations for approving development projects in appropriate time frames. There is concern, driven by the Master Builders Association and the Housing Industry Association, that those delays are going to blow out, with councils bracing for a rush of planning applications from home owners seeking a slice of the $688 million COVID stimulus package, which includes accessing the federal government's $25,000 HomeBuilder grant to build or upgrade their homes.

The HIA is worried the rush of applications will clash with councils having to implement the state government's controversial new planning laws, which are due to be introduced in September, and lead to further delays in their planning approval process. My questions are, and these may well need to be passed on to the relevant minister in the other place:

1. Are you concerned that the government's proposed new planning laws will lead to further delays from councils approving home building development applications?

2. Do you support a plea from the HIA to further delay the rollout of the new planning code until March next year to alleviate pressure on councils?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:50): To the extent that this relates to the HomeBuilder grant scheme, I think I have advised the chamber, or if not I have said publicly before, that this issue of planning delays together with bank finance delays were one of the concerns stakeholders like the HIA, the MBA, UDIA and others had raised with the government.

We have successfully negotiated with the commonwealth to amend the original draft guidelines to give South Australia the capacity to be flexible in terms of what is an unforeseen event. That will include planning delays in relation to the implementation of the three-month rule which, to refresh members' memory, is the time between the signing of a contract for a new home and the commencement of construction.

If that doesn't occur within three months, then you don't get the $25,000 grant. So there were significant concerns being raised about planning delays in relation to accessing the grant. We have negotiated successfully to be able to say that, if there is a planning delay as an unforeseen event, our Commissioner of State Taxation will have the capacity, on application, to be able to say, 'We will extend that three-month period and you will still be eligible for the $25,000 HomeBuilder grant.' We think that's an enormous flexibility in the scheme which we welcome the willingness of the commonwealth government to allow in South Australia.

I think the honourable member might have seen, I don't know whether it was the HIA or the MBA, saying in the weekend media that South Australia's HomeBuilder scheme was the best in the nation. That was in part because of a willingness to listen to stakeholders, work with the federal government and stakeholders to look at greater flexibility such as that particular area. I do note there are only a small number, perhaps two or three jurisdictions, which actually have application forms up and operational at the moment because of the complexity of trying to work through who was going to be eligible and how the schemes were going to be managed.

It's a credit to the public servants within RevenueSA. It's always an easy cop for the community, the media and generally a lot of other stakeholders to have a fair old crack at public servants, but the people within RevenueSA worked very hard and, together with Tasmania, were the first two jurisdictions to complete application forms and to be able to start processing applications as from Monday of this week.

As I said, I think we had 11,700 or something, some extraordinary number, of registrations of interest. Not all of those are going to be eligible, obviously. To be honest, I had better check that number. It was a very large number anyway, way more than will obviously be eligible for the scheme. So I think the flexibility is there.

In relation to the broader issues that the member refers to, I don't have any direct knowledge of that particular aspect of the planning scheme rollout by the government. My recollection of reading the weekend media was that there had already been some delays in relation to the implementation of that particular scheme. I understand some of the industry, as per the honourable member's question, are arguing for further delays but, in as far as it relates to the HomeBuilder scheme, we think the flexibility we have will be able to be successfully negotiated as it relates to the HomeBuilder scheme.