Social Housing

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:53): My question is to the Minister for Human Services regarding social housing, a very important topic. Can the minister please update the council on social housing stock numbers in South Australia?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:53): I thank the honourable member for her question. We did quite recently have the Report on Government Services for 2021 issued, which as many honourable members would be aware provides some statistical comparisons between jurisdictions. It includes all states and territories in relation to a range of measures.

In relation to social housing and specialist services—that's what this particular report was done on—it provided data with a national comparison between jurisdictions, which showed that in South Australia there are some 46,383 dwellings. Compared to all residential dwellings in South Australia, that is about 5.9 per cent of dwellings in South Australia. The national average is 4.1 per cent. Indeed, I note that South Australia, of all the states, has the highest proportion of social housing dwellings in Australia.

There have been calls for increases in social housing from many sectors, and some people have referred to the Victorian government's decision to build an additional 5,000 dwellings in that jurisdiction. According to the Report on Government Services, Victoria currently has 80,500 social housing dwellings, which comes in at about 3 per cent, so that proportion, I note, is already behind South Australia.

The policy position of the Australian Labor Party in all of this is, I must say, a bit of a confusing mess. I note that the former Treasurer, who I have quoted, has advocated for reducing the number of social housing dwellings in South Australia down to 30,000, which would take us to the national average. We have a fairly ambiguous position at times from the shadow minister, who at times talks about increasing it but then I think gets muzzled by others in her team who understand what the financial implications of that are.

In terms of our role with managing social and public housing since we have come to government, we have attempted to stem the bleeding of our public housing assets from the shocking statistics that the Labor Party had in terms of 7½ thousand properties that they sold at some $1.5 billion. Also, I tabled a response to a question this week which clearly demonstrated that our ever benevolent Treasurer, Mr Lucas, had reversed a grant to the South Australian Housing Trust of some $70 million a year, which has assisted us to manage the reductions in stock. So we have been working assiduously.

The numbers of the viability has come down significantly. It is at a quarter of what Labor has been selling stock as. Our goal remains that we don't wish to be selling more, but we are in such a position managing this huge set of assets of some $10 million that we are really trying to stabilise the organisation. I think it is clear to anybody who is objective and who looks at the data that is available that if they have an interest in social housing they need to put the Labor Party last at the next election.