Mr BAYLEY – Minister, the Budget is really clear in highlighting a range of risks with government priorities being delivered through public non-financial corporations, such as Homes Tasmania. I note that Homes Tas’ debt goes up from $500 million thereabouts now, to $1 billion at the end of the forward Estimates. That’s $25 million to service it, and now up to $50 million in 2029. A couple of questions – what’s that being used for? Is that purely being used to build homes and do activities or also paying for staff? What’s the strategy for paying it back? Can you guarantee that social homes won’t be sold off to repay that debt, with the exception of affordable homes to existing tenants and a few small caveats like that, which are well understood?
Mr VINCENT – Certainly. Debt servicing is provided to Homes Tasmania through the Tasmanian budget and is clearly identified in the Homes Tasmania’ chapter. Homes Tasmania is responsible for servicing the debt through the debt service provided in the Budget, the current debt is secured by Treasury guarantee. The debt servicing costs associated with supporting the additional borrowings excessed in 2028-29 to $221 million, and it is used for capital in those places. I will ask the CEO for a little bit more clarification, but it is used for social and affordable housing.
Ms MORGAN-THOMAS – Yes, I can confirm that the Homes Tasmania’s board has decided we will only use debt for capital and that covers social and affordable housing, it also covers our equity share in MyHome, and we use that to pay for development costs of land that we will be developing for sale or retention. It goes to all of those that are capital things, not recurrent expenditure.
As Mr Limkin said earlier, there is a financial review which will be looking at all of those things. The work that we have done so far, is we know that from land sales that we expect to make a profit from that and the capital that we get from that is returned into the capital budget, and we will use that capital ahead of debt. When MyHome co‑purchasers decide to either buy us out, or refinance or something like that, our share is returned to us – that also comes into the capital budget and is allocated for capital purposes. We’ve been modelling what that looks like, and because MyHome has a really long tail and so does land development, we will still be developing land when we’ve reached the 10,000, so that will keep coming in. At the moment, we’re looking at when could you retire the debt using those funds? But all of that will be subject to what comes out of financial –
Mr BAYLEY – The Budget adequately provides for you to service the debt that you’ve incurred?
Ms MORGAN-THOMAS – The way debt comes at the moment, we can only borrow as much as the amount that is provided to us by the government for debt-servicing. We have a debt limit; it’s a self-limiting thing. We have a debt limit that is approved by the cap, which is approved by the Treasurer and then we go to TASCORP and say, ‘Please can we have some debt?’ and they go ‘We need to see the Treasurer’s guarantee in writing,’ so we go back to the Treasurer and get a guarantee and then we ask for the drawdown.
Mr BAYLEY – Minister, are you able to outline for the committee or perhaps it might be something you need to take on notice, what applications Homes Tasmania has made for federal funding over the last 12 months, and for what projects and which ones have been successful and which ones haven’t?
Mr VINCENT – It’s been quite awkward for Homes Tasmania with some of the federal funding issues, but I have had discussions with several of the providers that Homes Tasmania works with and I will ask the CEO to clarify that there has been a steady flow of some of the HSAP money to Tasmania.
Ms MORGAN-THOMAS – Thanks, minister. There are a lot of commonwealth funds, and they’ve all got very similar names, so bear with me. There’s been two rounds of the Housing Australia Future Fund. In Round 2, which was open to state housing authorities only, we exceeded our quota. I think we should have got about 100 but we actually got 144 Housing Australia Future Fund dwellings. We’re in the process of negotiating all those and getting all that lined up. We have to build them before the funding happens. They’re all in train. The Social Housing Accelerator, which was a few years ago, the first of those properties were delivered on Flinders Island a couple of months ago. They were some of the first in the country, so go Flinders Island Aboriginal Association. This is probably the hardest place to build and a high performer.
The rest of those will be progressively coming online as they get built. One of those you might recall is the one that St Vincent de Paul is doing in Argyle Street, that’s part of that program. All of these have some Homes Tasmania funding and involvement in it. The Housing Support Program, which is the priority work stream, Tasmania’s share of that is $25 million. We are using that – because some of it is about infrastructure – to unlock land, and that will unlock about 500 lots of land and build 20 homes. We’re working on all of those. There’s a whole range of little programs in that and big ones.
Tasmania’s share of the Crisis and Transitional Accommodation Program is $2.25 million. There are seven dwellings out of that for women escaping family and domestic violence. We’re in the middle of starting the builds on those. There’s another program called the National Housing Infrastructure Facility Crisis and Transitional Program which has been extended and is open for applications at the moment. It has an extended period that’s open. We are likely to put in for more standalone homes for women escaping domestic and family violence, and we have a priority in the north-west for those and the other program. There are a couple of other programs that we are talking to them about – State Growth is talking to them about, that we haven’t quite landed at the Commonwealth end at the moment, but we have a lot of interest.
Mr BAYLEY – Did you apply for any and miss out; are there many that you’ve kind of missed out on, for whatever reason?
Ms MORGAN-THOMAS – Not at all in the last year. In fact, we have more than we thought we would get, particularly in HAFF.
Mr VINCENT – When you analysed the figures on what the national fund is for each of those five that were just mentioned, we run it in between 2‑4 per cent, about 2.5 per cent, which is probably where Tasmania sits again on the national average, from what I’ve been told.
Mr BAYLEY – National average in terms of historical allocation or in terms of need?
Mr VINCENT – I would say in terms of need.
Ms MORGAN-THOMAS – It’s population.
Mr VINCENT – Population based – the 2.5 per cent, 2‑4 per cent. They are federally making sure that we do get at least a decent allocation towards – there is a growing number of private developers who are also asking for Homes Tasmania to support their projects towards more affordable housing as well.
Mr BAYLEY – Just one last question. I won’t use my two, but minister, I can’t help but pick up on the CEO’s comments there, around the failures in the private housing market. We’ve got a long list of questions that I won’t direct at you because unfortunately, they’re for the minister for Consumer Affairs.
It begs the question, things like reining in short-stay accommodation, rent control legislation, minimum standards and ending unfair no-cause evictions – these are all the sort of things that we need to improve to give renters rights and give them the ability to stay in the private rental market, so they don’t fall down to Homes Tas and the social housing market.
It begs the question, what do you do as Minister for Housing in that space? There’s a bit of an unfortunate skew in the portfolios that you don’t have responsibility for some of these really critical housing issues that impact on Homes Tas as we’ve heard. What conversations are going in and what commitments can you give to this committee about championing some of those reforms, so that we do get a holistic reform of the housing space and start to meet people’s needs?
Mr VINCENT – There’s a lot of different areas there that you’ve just mentioned, plus a few others that we’re looking at that need to be reviewed. Implied tenancies are another one that’s proven to be quite awkward, within families or situations where you think you’re doing the right thing, but then we find out that place is taken up. There is also an area with the NDIS that we’ve identified that we don’t have a lot of control of now, but we would like to be a little bit more involved with.
A different pot of money – there are a lot of homes sitting vacant around the state at the moment, that we think we could use for a different classification, but there’s a lot of work that has to go in behind the scenes. As I hinted at before, there’s a lot of one per centres that we have to do to make sure this is right.
It’s been a very emotional two‑and‑a‑half months in the role, I can guarantee that. I’ve taken it all on board and I’m listening to all advice. Nobody has a magic silver bullet for any of this at all, and that’s why I’ve been so open in conversations with everybody here at parliament, as well as everybody involved in the industry, because those one per centres will make the difference on how we deal with some of these issues. I can only give you a guarantee that I will be doing everything I possibly can in this area, and happy to take any suggestions on board because sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference.
It can be the confidence we’ve struck with some of the housing supply orders – a lot of pushback from communities about having a large number of social-affordable housing in the area, which I think is quite unjust with the way social housing is done. That’s why I’ve mentioned about the cookie-cutter, it’s just not there anymore. These are architecturally designed homes in many cases, that fit perfectly into existing communities, and we need to do a greater sell on how some of these subdivisions are so well designed, which takes away some of that angst from perhaps the community that are pushing back on timeline. It’s a lot of different things that I want to get involved with to try and fix.
Mr BAYLEY – I don’t think anyone’s saying there’s a single silver bullet; that’s why there are all these levers that need to be pulled. There’s plenty of evidence that points to the different levers. At the moment, I guess there’s some frustration in the in the community and in this place as well. The government is sort of focusing on a few of them and not all of them. It’s clear we need to pull out all stops.
Mr VINCENT – I’m very pleased to have the portfolios I have. I’ve got a fair workload, and everybody’s been telling me that I have, and I know I have. My ministry is actually blended into a lot of the parts that need to be looked at and are part of the solution, or part of the things that I can have influence on, whether it’s the knowledge and infrastructure or certainly, Mr Reid and I are having a lot of conversations, and I’ve touched on about some of the planning things that we need to look at to simplify the process. I’m comfortable with having that blend of ministries that should be able to allow me to focus on a lot of the different solutions as well.
