Ms O’CONNOR question to MINISTER for HOUSING and PLANNING, Mr VINCENT
The latest Homes Tasmania dashboard reports the private rental vacancy rates in Hobart, Burnie and Launceston were 0.4 per cent, 0.3 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively, as at the end of September this year.
Median statewide rent for houses was just under $500 a week in the June 2025 quarter, an increase of 4.2 per cent from the June quarter of last year. There’s been a decrease in building approvals following a national trend, while the average wait time for priority applicants from the housing register is 82.6 weeks at the end of September 2025. That’s almost seven years, and the housing registers soared to its highest level ever with 5336 applicants on the register, up from 4892 at the same time last year.
Clearly, whatever your government is doing to address the housing crisis is not working. You are the new minister. What are your plans for reversing this worrying trend?
ANSWER
Mr President, may I have my back to you while I address the member for Hobart, please?
Good questions. Certainly, over the last eight weeks, I have buried myself into the social and affordable housing of this portfolio especially, along with the planning complications that come with it. I would like to give you a great big answer like so many people do in the press or try to, but you will certainly get an honest one. To make it probably a little bit worse on some of those stats you just pointed out, yesterday the mainland story was that the difference between private ownership and investment ownership of homes in Australia has also increased to the investor side of things by about – I can’t remember – but it’s now 62 per cent, I think. The fact that to construct a house on average in Australia, also in the last 12 months, have gone up by 6 per cent.
We’ve got to be realistic and say, I can’t see an easy way around the numbers not continuing to grow. What I can be really serious and passionate about is the fact that a lot of things that have been happening over the last couple of years with Homes Tasmania in the culmination of a lot of the housing supply orders and the accumulation of land that is going through various degrees of planning, will and should see sensible increase in the amount of homes being built next year, all things being fair and equal.
Huntingfield has been talked about an enormous amount, but when you actually dig into that – that’s what my office has been doing over the last five weeks – it is not a pretty story involving everything from EPBs, environmental reports to council, Homes Tasmania. All aspects of that subdivision being so big, is complications that I never appreciated, even at my level in the building and council network, until we delved into it.
It was also highlighted in some of my travels around the state ‑ and I should reach out to the people that run Youth2Independence in Devonport, we spent a bit of time there last week meeting some of the kids in that transitional crisis care. How amazing it is.
However, over 50 per cent of the home market now is not the traditional three‑ and four‑bedroom home that most of us have grown up understanding and appreciating. It is about one‑ and two‑bedroom units, which changes our concept in planning towards a different way and size of blocks, and how you fit some of those developments in with conventional subdivision layouts.
Ms O’Connor – How about some medium density?
Mr VINCENT – Yes, and I’ve also been out to talk to Glenorchy Council about the corridor and that medium density. I’ve gathered a lot of information. There are certainly quite a few small bits of the planning scheme, or slight changes or interpretations, that we can make to help this situation.
What I was already aware of, and which has become more apparent in looking at many of the industry issues, is that the interpretation of so many well‑meaning council planners on the same sort of thing is not good, and it’s not conducive to consistency with builders working in several municipalities. We have to look, and have been looking, with the state planning office, at how we can tidy up the interpretations.
There are a lot of little – I won’t even say one‑per‑centers at the moment – they’re all little half‑per‑centers that will add up to a different approach leading into 2026. I’ve found it draining but exciting, and every rock we turn over we find quite a few issues, but we also find some pretty sensible ways through some of these smaller issues. Some of the bigger ones we will work through, but I hope that gives you some idea on what we’ve been looking at and finding and appreciating, so that we can make a difference leading into and during 2026.
SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTION
Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, may I have a supplementary question?
Mr PRESIDENT – The member for Hobart.
Ms O’CONNOR – Mr President, I was disappointed to hear the minister say it, and I wonder if it was a slight slip – that on the basis of the statistics in the detail of my question that you can’t see the numbers not continuing to grow.
Related to your answer is the fate of the former K&D site in central Nipaluna/Hobart. As you would know, there is a new buyer ‑ a new owner ‑ for that site, and that owner is reported in the Mercury‘s real estate pages as saying that they want to make sure that the site realises its full potential and they’re happy to work with governments on making sure that there is capacity there for social and affordable housing with mixed‑use and businesses at ground level. Are you able to update the Council on any conversations about that site and also to commit, as the minister, to working with the new owner to help that site realise its full potential?
Mr PRESIDENT – That was another question, but I will allow the minister to answer that question.
ANSWER
I have not had any conversations directly over the last eight weeks regarding the K&D site because it has been in commercial transition with new owners, and I haven’t been informed who those new owners are yet. What I can say is that Homes Tasmania and other people involved in looking at the K&D site have had sensible conversations about partnering.
One of the interesting things that I didn’t touch on in my other answer is the fact that the commercial viability of quite a few of these projects, especially when you’re looking at commercial businesses mixing in with the density of residential places, is quite complex and expensive for quite a few reasons. That is the reason why there have to be more conversations between housing providers, whether it’s commonwealth or whether it’s Homes Tasmania, into working with commercial operators to get that viability of sites like K&D right. As that information comes available, I’m happy to bring it back to the House.
