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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-06-26 Daily Xml
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Housing Supply

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:10): My question is to the Premier. Did the government mislead South Australians in its February 2023 press release? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order, sir: questions need to make sense in their initial expression without explanation. The idea that you can ask a question like that without—it shouldn't require an explanation to be valid. The validity of the question should be in its initial asking. Erskine May is very clear on this.

Mr TEAGUE: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: I will listen to the deputy leader's point of order.

Mr TEAGUE: The practice so far in this parliament, and particularly in the course of the Speaker's time in the chair, has included the government taking such a fine line on the introduction of facts that it has become the practice for there to be a question that has been left open to this extent. Leave is sought for an explanation and the house can determine whether leave is granted, otherwise the government is going to have to give latitude for questions to introduce just enough facts for what the Manager of Government Business seems to insist upon.

The SPEAKER: Leader, do you want to maybe slightly rephrase the question?

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: Sir, I will have another go, and if not I will move to something else and we can work it out. My question is to the Premier: was the government's February 2023 press release factually correct? With your leave and the leave of the house, sir, I will explain.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order, sir: it is an open question. I don't mean to labour this point, sir. The government issued multiple press releases in February 2023 and the idea that the government can ascertain which press release he is talking about without an explanation is ridiculous, sir. The question needs to make sense on its own before it requires explanation. Erskine May is clear on this.

The SPEAKER: I hear you. We will try to work this out.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: If I may, sir: what I am happy to do is I am also happy to provide you with a copy of the release.

The SPEAKER: Can you mention what the release was, in the question, and then—

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: Yes, sir, it's in the explanation. It's quite benign.

The SPEAKER: We are just trying to get some questions—

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: If you will allow me to ask the question, then you can determine. How about that?

The SPEAKER: Okay.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: The government's media release dated 12 February 2023 said that construction on the first homes on its land release sites in Hackham, Dry Creek, Concordia and Sellicks Beach was able to begin next year. In estimates yesterday, the Minister for Housing confirmed that these timelines were not necessarily accurate.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Housing and members on my left will come to order. The Premier.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:12): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think the Leader of the Opposition would do well to spend more effort familiarising himself with the remarks from the Minister for Housing and actually assess them in a bit of detail. The member for Hartley, the Leader of the Opposition, is right to scrutinise the government in terms of its policy settings around housing. The Leader of the Opposition is fulfilling his duty, I think quite aptly, to inquire of the government what results we are delivering in respect of housing supply. I will take the opportunity to furnish the Leader of the Opposition with some detailed responses in regard to those lines of inquiry because it gives a sense of where we have come from and where we are going.

In the March quarter of 2022 in terms of dwelling completions—this is homes completed, not approved or planned; this is homes getting built and people moving into them—in the last quarter of the life of the former government when we saw a construction boom occurring during the course of COVID—so this was not a statistical anomaly; this was a high watermark, so to speak, as far as the opposition was concerned—2,311 dwellings were completed in that high watermark for the government after a huge amount of stimulus in terms of demand in the March quarter of 2022.

As a result of all the policy effort that this government has instituted, at a time when the rest of the country is going backwards in terms of housing supply, in the state of South Australia in the December quarter, the most recent available quarterly data, we had 3,022 homes, in effect almost a 30 per cent increase or thereabouts—I am just guesstimating there—in terms of increase on the former government.

What we are seeing in the state of South Australia, because of concerted and very deliberate policy effort across a range of different areas, including across different portfolios represented here on the front bench, is a whole-of-government team effort to actually make the policy changes that are not just forecasting an increased supply but actually delivering it at a pace that the rest of the nation is genuinely envious of.

That is not to say that we do not confront a crisis still in terms of housing, because we see some of the lowest vacancy rates anywhere in the country in terms of rental vacancy rates here in South Australia. Notwithstanding talking points that the opposition might seek to prosecute, it is not lost on us that this is having a real-world impact on people in the rental market and it is having a real-world impact on first-home buyers. We are suffering the consequences of problems that in many respects are good to have. Because we have a faster growing economy than anywhere else in the rest of the country, we have demand for housing.

Mr TEAGUE: Point of order: 98A. We are here in the immediate aftermath of estimates and we have a question that is specifically in relation to sites at Hackham, Dry Creek, Concordia and Sellicks Beach. The substance of the question is one thing, it is very specific, but to hear an answer that is addressing macroeconomics is not addressing the substance of the question. The Premier needs to return to the substance of the question.

The SPEAKER: The Premier has the call.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS: I am happy to refer back to the member's question in the context of those particular allotments being released, because what the Leader of the Opposition refers to in his question and the deputy leader repeats in his point of order are the examples of the places where we have released the land. We have commenced the code amendments and we are the government seeking to actually allow construction to commence and get done in these areas, with the water supply that is required, in a way that is so dramatically in stark contrast with the policy of the former government, which was almost in effect constraining land supply, which of course was doing nothing to address the challenge we have at hand. We understand the real-world outcomes, and the outcomes are the record growth in housing supply that is not in dispute because it is individually verified in a way that you might not like.

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