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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-31 Daily Xml
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HomeBuilder Program

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (14:30): My question is to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer please update the chamber on the HomeBuilder projects that have been supported by the government?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:30): I am pleased to advise the house in terms of the latest discussions that have transpired in relation to HomeBuilder. As I have informed the house before, the total applications are now, I think, over 10,500 as the final days—I think today might be the final day—click over for the $15,000 grant, as opposed to the $25,000 grant. In the next 24 hours we will probably have the absolute final figures in terms of the total number of applications.

Thus far, a rough estimate of those deemed to be ineligible is in and around about 10 per cent, so the overwhelming majority of them are deemed to be eligible. We, as I have outlined to the house before, have sought a response from the federal government as to whether or not it is prepared to extend the six-month period from the signing of the contract to the commencement of construction, and for the reasons I have outlined before (and I will not go over it again), we are still awaiting a formal response from the federal government. We understood they may well delay a final decision on that submission, which has been supported, I might say, by some other state treasurers as well. I do not purport to speak on behalf of all of them, but a number of the other state treasurers have supported our submission to the commonwealth government.

We understood that a final decision from the federal government would be delayed until the closure of applications, which we are hopeful will be possibly next week. At this stage we do not know the federal government's response. We remain in dialogue with the federal government to see whether or not we can extend it.

The final point I will make is that the government continues to have a series of both individual builders and stakeholder groups, such as the MBA, the HIA and others, who are all saying that at the moment you literally cannot get timber to scratch yourself with in relation to trying to build homes. Most of the tier 1 builders seem to have contractual supplies organised to meet their commitments, but a significant number of smaller and medium-sized builders, who have signed up to contracts with applicants, are not able at the moment to get timber to build the houses.

In other areas, such as steel, there are significant shortages. In a discussion I had with some education department infrastructure bureaucrats, when we were talking about the education department schools build in time for next year, they were struggling to get hold of basic essentials for some schools like sinks to go into either laboratories or toilet facilities, and their response to me was that they were struggling because the residential building industry was essentially maxing out basic essentials like kitchen sinks, for example.

There is enormous pressure, which is a wonderful problem to have, because in the alternative, without HomeBuilder, people were telling us that a lot of the residential home builders were going to go broke. We now have a problem at the other end in terms of managing what is a very much overheated residential housing market and an extension of that time line would do wonders.

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