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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-03-04 Daily Xml
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HOUSING TRUST

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite—Leader of the Opposition) (14:40): My question is to the Premier. Has the government's privatisation of 8,000 Housing Trust homes contributed to the housing affordability crisis facing South Australian families? In his 2002 election launch, the Premier promised the following:

Privatisations in South Australia will end from day one of a Labor government. There will be no sale of our Housing Trust.

Since then, the government—

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Sir, I rise on a point of order. That is not an explanation of the question at all. It is some sort of rambling dissertation on something unrelated to it.

The SPEAKER: Order! Yes, I uphold the point of order.

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH: On a point of order, Mr Speaker, on what basis do you uphold the point of order? Can you explain? The explanation is directly relevant to the question.

The SPEAKER: Order! What matters is to what extent it explains the question. The question was: has the privatisation of homes, the selling of Housing Trust homes, contributed to the housing crisis? What you have said is merely debate. It does not offer any explanation of the question. The minister can understand what you are asking, and so can the house, as plainly as I can. Leave is withdrawn.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Minister for Families and Communities, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Housing, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Disability, Minister Assisting the Premier in Cabinet Business and Public Sector Management) (14:43): The question proceeds on the basis of a false premise. It is not a privatisation of the Housing Trust to sell Housing Trust houses—and I might just explain that for those who are not students of history. By 1993, when the Housing Trust hit its high water mark, in terms of the number of Housing Trust houses, 120,000 houses were built by the South Australian Housing Trust but there were only about 60,000 houses in public ownership. Why the difference? Because it sold the balance. For those who do not understand their own political legacy from the Playford and the Butler governments, which established—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: That is right. That good socialist, Sir Richard Butler—

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —that is right, who looks down at us as we speak—would be horrified that they are walking away from his legacy at such great pace, because the reality is that the South Australian Housing Trust has always been about selling homes. Indeed, my family got its first start in 1961, when we purchased our own Housing Trust home through a rent to purchase scheme in Henley Beach South.

That is how many South Australians got their start, their foothold, in the housing market, and we want to re-create that. That is what our plan is about. The 8,000 homes over 10 years was about two objectives: first, grappling with the legacy of a reduction in funding from the previous commonwealth government where, frankly, we have been strangled by the reduction in funding through commonwealth-state housing agreements. We were punished because we had a very large public housing stock in this state.

Basically, every other state and territory had much lower Housing Trust levels. Our state had very high Housing Trust levels, so we consistently missed out on attracting to our state commonwealth rent allowance which was enjoyed by other states. We have been punished for having a very large public housing stock. We have been forced by commonwealth policy to have to run down that stock just to make ends meet.

However, the way in which we sought to respond to that dilemma was not just to sell houses willy-nilly but to try to put them into the hands of ordinary South Australians. We have targeted our sales program to Housing Trust tenants, and I must say that it has been a great success. We have been selling those Housing Trust homes to Housing Trust tenants and giving them the opportunity to buy their own homes. Indeed, as of today's date, 798 South Australians have bought their own Housing Trust homes with the assistance of our EquityStart scheme, which gave them that little bit of a leg-up to get into a Housing Trust home.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: And I know members opposite do not like people rising above their station, but we believe that people can move on. We believe that people are allowed to aspire to home ownership, and we will do whatever we can to bring that about. What we have done with our plan is not only allow Housing Trust tenants to get hold of their own homes but also, when we have not been able to sell the homes to those tenants, offered them on to the next tranche of low to moderate income earners with an innovative scheme that is now being copied around the nation. Our property locator is a website on which for 30 days we place a Housing Trust home that we are about to sell, in order to give first crack to low to moderate income earners. People who qualify for HomeStart homes get the opportunity to buy those houses to get a leg-up into the housing market. That is what we are doing.

We are confronting the viability issues with the Housing Trust. We are not burying our head in the sand. We are not doing what those opposite did where they flogged off Housing Trust houses in the Peachey Belt area for $80,000 which we are now having to buy back to regenerate the area.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: We did not go in for a fire sale like those members opposite. We are doing something intelligent which deals not only with the viability issue but which also gives an opportunity for working South Australians.

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