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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-02-23 Daily Xml
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Regional Housing

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (Leader of the Opposition) (14:21): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development on regional housing.

Leave granted.

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: The government says it will fast-track a land release to deliver at least 23,700 more homes for South Australians in urban and peri-urban areas; however, when it comes to regional housing the government's big announcement was a mere 150 houses in total—that is, 30 houses in five regional areas run by Renewal SA.

Copper Coast Mayor, Roslyn Talbot, has said about the scheme that she is hoping that this is a small step towards alleviating the problem, but it won't be enough to tackle the issue. Ms Talbot has also said although housing was a necessity to attract staff to the Copper Coast, the issues went hand in hand with child care and health care. Ms Talbot has said, 'We've got huge waiting lists for child care, health care and housing,' and, 'If we can attract staff with somewhere to live then they face the issue of trying to find somewhere for their kids to go to child care or a doctor to see.' My questions to the minister are:

1. How much will the housing scheme pilot cost the government and taxpayers?

2. What is she doing as Minister for Regional Development to ensure that there is adequate childcare and health services in regional communities?

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development, Minister for Forest Industries) (14:23): I thank the honourable Leader of the Opposition for her question. I am very pleased to be able to talk about some of the housing announcements for regions that we have made recently. The Premier last week, when we were on Yorke Peninsula at Wallaroo and Maitland, was very pleased to be able to announce some of the critical worker regional housing pilot that will be making quite a big difference across our state.

That particular announcement is in regard to providing housing for those critical workers such as nurses, ambos, police, teachers and so on. That will give an opportunity for us to be able to have those houses for those particular occupations, which are critical to regional areas, and then roll out where we will be able to have private investors take over the ownership of those, similar to the defence housing project, prior to then being able to reinvest into more housing.

That, of course, will be on long-term lease provisions so that those critical workers do have those opportunities to be housed. As we know and as we have talked about many times in this place, it is incredibly important that we do have housing for those critical workers in regional areas. I have told the story before, I think, of how in Mount Gambier we had two teachers who moved to the area to teach in one of the local high schools.

They loved the area, but they were living in a caravan park for two terms. They didn't want to continue that, so they ended up moving back to Adelaide, which was a sad loss for the Mount Gambier region. These sorts of stories are common around other parts of our state as well. So that was one of the announcements that we made.

We have also made several announcements in regard to temporary worker accommodation, whereby it will be streamlined for those areas that need temporary worker accommodation to be able to erect temporary accommodation through more direct means. There are a number of other announcements. These are specifically the responsibility of the Minister for Housing, so if there is additional information that I can provide I am happy to come back to the chamber to do so.

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