Ms O’CONNOR question to MINISTER for HOUSING and PLANNING, Mr VINCENT
Budget Paper 2, volume 2, states that Homes Tasmania is responsible for delivering the government’s 10 year plan to provide an additional 10,000 social and affordable homes by 2032. The budget papers also make it clear that Homes Tasmania’s interest bearing liabilities, that is its debt, is forecast to double from $476 million this year to more than a $1 billion by 2029. In hindsight, it makes a celebration of the forgiving of the Commonwealth state housing debts seem quaint indeed.
Do you agree that Homes Tasmania is a model that was set up perhaps with the best of good intentions but is actually failing to deliver and saddling the body that should be delivering social and affordable housing with absolutely unaffordable levels of debt?
ANSWER
Mr President, it is a very interesting question. I will do my best to answer it.
In the time I’ve been Housing minister, I’ve seen a lot of information come across my desk and been involved with a lot of discussions. In hindsight – marvellous thing, hindsight – and I wasn’t around when it was swung over, but I am extremely committed to the model that’s there at the moment – in part.
The Crawford report has been very sensible about things that need to be fine-tuned. When you think about most other organisations, after a two-year period there’s usually a review period. Probably some of these things could have been done earlier but under my tenure, we are working through those issues, and we know there are quite a few issues.
When you look at the debt burden of Homes, if you snapped your fingers and wanted to put all the people on the waiting list into a unit or home, you’re in the vicinity of $3 billion required to do that, in simple multiplication of the numbers. There is a lot of work when you look at the national level and trying to keep up with what other states are doing to keep abreast of that with similar proportional numbers are involved also.
My commitment is to work with the interim chair, Ben Wilson, to deliver a much better model with fine-tuning of some of the things in the Crawford report that will speed up the number of homes or units or assistance to homeless organisations in a quicker way. When you look at the numbers achieved by Homes Tasmania, it is still substantial. We talk about the negatives of the growing list, but behind that is some substantial work done already.
In talking to several of the providers, they are in a position of willing to talk about different measures that may assist in dealing with some of the root causes instead of the end cause. I am open to all those conversations.
I can give you my commitment that over the next few months and early into next year, we will see, in my opinion, a much more deliverable Homes Tasmania than people are criticising at the moment. I am trying not to look back too much other than to learn from it and try to see how I can use my knowledge to deliver more and in a more efficient way into the future.
