{"id":41260,"date":"2026-10-22T16:18:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T05:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=41260"},"modified":"2026-10-22T16:18:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T05:18:20","slug":"inquiry-australias-delivery-of-social-housing-is-a-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2026\/10\/22\/inquiry-australias-delivery-of-social-housing-is-a-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Inquiry: Australia\u2019s delivery of social housing is a failure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Senate Economics References Committee\u2019s first public hearing into <a href=\"https:\/\/media.greens.org.au\/t\/y-l-fhrutjt-dtdkhihdlr-y\/\"><u>Social Housing<\/u><\/a>, held in Canberra today, heard evidence of serious failures by the Government to deliver its promised social and affordable homes to people in need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Evidence to the committee today showed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>As end-August 2026, Housing Australia has provided 1,607\u00a0of its 40,000 social and affordable homes target.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>That\u2019s 4% of the HAFF target &#8211; when we are more than 40% into its timeline<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Only 57% of these, 1607 are\u00a0<em><u>additional<\/u><\/em> dwellings. The rest are purchases of existing dwellings. They don\u2019t add more houses to housing stock.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Housing Australia doesn\u2019t have a plan for what happens if funded providers can\u2019t deliver the homes they\u2019ve been contracted to by their 30 June 2029 deadline.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Housing Australia was unable to answer questions about how many homes in their 40,000 target are public housing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u2018Affordable\u2019 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 \u2018affordable\u2019 is unaffordable to many.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Greens spokesperson for finance, housing and homelessness and Senator for South Australia, Barbara Pocock:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis hearing has revealed massive delays to the Government\u2019s housing strategy. The Government is nowhere near achieving their social and affordable target of 40,000 and it has no contingency plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cUnder the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), just 1,607 social and affordable homes have been added to housing stock &#8211; a mere drop in the ocean for the 640,000 households in need of a roof over their heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThroughout the hearing, Housing Australia has shown itself to be incapable of answering basic questions about their program to deliver social and affordable housing. If <em>they<\/em> can\u2019t answer these questions, then who can?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs Labor\u2019s principal response to the worst housing crisis in living memory, Housing Australia has shown itself to be woefully inadequate to the challenge.&nbsp;<br>\u201cIt\u2019s shocking that in the midst of this housing crisis, the Government doesn\u2019t even have a dedicated department for housing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI went into this hearing today expecting to learn more about the Government\u2019s delivery on social housing but my questions were met with inadequate responses from Housing Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe HAFF and the Government\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201dI hate to think what the post-war leaders who built Australia\u2019s public housing would have made of this morning\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSuccessive 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe need a national target of at least 10% of public and community housing as a share of all housing stock.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s time for the Government to get back into the business of building public housing directly. We\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ipkdef_u4ho\"><u>Public hearing link<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aph.gov.au\/DocumentStore.ashx?hearingid=32722&amp;submissions=false\"><u>Program<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Senate Economics References Committee\u2019s 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: Greens spokesperson for finance, housing and homelessness and Senator for South Australia, Barbara Pocock: &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2026\/10\/22\/inquiry-australias-delivery-of-social-housing-is-a-failure\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Inquiry: Australia\u2019s delivery of social housing is a failure&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41261,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41260\/revisions\/41261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}