The Senate Economics References Committee’s first public hearing into Social Housing, held in Canberra today, heard evidence of serious failures by the Government to deliver its promised social and affordable homes to people in need.
Evidence to the committee today showed:
- As end-August 2026, Housing Australia has provided 1,607 of its 40,000 social and affordable homes target.
- That’s 4% of the HAFF target – when we are more than 40% into its timeline
- Only 57% of these, 1607 are additional dwellings. The rest are purchases of existing dwellings. They don’t add more houses to housing stock.
- Housing Australia doesn’t have a plan for what happens if funded providers can’t deliver the homes they’ve been contracted to by their 30 June 2029 deadline.
- Housing Australia was unable to answer questions about how many homes in their 40,000 target are public housing.
- ‘Affordable’ housing is defined by Housing Australia as rent paid at 74.9% of market rate, which would plunge many households into housing stress. Their definition of ‘affordable’ is unaffordable to many.
Greens spokesperson for finance, housing and homelessness and Senator for South Australia, Barbara Pocock:
“This hearing has revealed massive delays to the Government’s housing strategy. The Government is nowhere near achieving their social and affordable target of 40,000 and it has no contingency plan.
“Under the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), just 1,607 social and affordable homes have been added to housing stock – a mere drop in the ocean for the 640,000 households in need of a roof over their heads.
“Throughout the hearing, Housing Australia has shown itself to be incapable of answering basic questions about their program to deliver social and affordable housing. If they can’t answer these questions, then who can?
“As Labor’s principal response to the worst housing crisis in living memory, Housing Australia has shown itself to be woefully inadequate to the challenge.
“It’s shocking that in the midst of this housing crisis, the Government doesn’t even have a dedicated department for housing.
“I went into this hearing today expecting to learn more about the Government’s delivery on social housing but my questions were met with inadequate responses from Housing Australia.
“The HAFF and the Government’s overall housing response is too small, too slow and too complex. It is nowhere near the scale we need. And it is an administrative failure.
”I hate to think what the post-war leaders who built Australia’s public housing would have made of this morning’s hearing. Our forebears met a housing crisis in a much poorer country, in the aftermath of war, amidst big material shortages. Today Labor has so many more resources at its finger tips but it is failing on every front and missing every target.
“Successive Labor and Coalition governments have severely neglected investment in public housing and community housing, which has dropped to a record low of 3.7% of all housing stock.
“We need a national target of at least 10% of public and community housing as a share of all housing stock.
“It’s time for the Government to get back into the business of building public housing directly. We’ve done it before, we can do it again. And we need a federal housing department that can lead and deliver, not a series of struggling separate silos missing every target.”