Housing—Supply
153. Ms Sook Yee Laito theMinister for Housing and Works:
I refer to the Cook Labor government’s efforts to deliver more housing opportunities for Western Australians.
(1) Can the minister outline how measures by this government to increase housing supply are seeing positive outcomes in the community?
(2) Can the minister advise whether he is aware of anyone who seeks to derail this progress?
Mr John Carey replied:
(1)–(2) I thank the member for her question. As I have said many times in this house, since 2021 we have invested more than $5 billion—$5.1 billion—in housing initiatives, social, affordable and homelessness measures. Just last week, the member will remember, we had delivered 3,028 social homes with another 1,000 under contract and construction. Of course, that is not the only thing we are doing. We are leading the nation by cutting red tape. We have accelerated the delivery of land supply. We have boosted the construction workforce for the housing industry, and there has been a vast number of other initiatives.
I am pleased to see the HIA scorecard that came out last week. I might read from it. It states:
Western Australia is the new player in town! …
Western Australia has had a remarkable surge up the rankings to take out second place this time, overtaking Queensland. Western Australia's score of 79 is higher than it's been in over a decade …
It goes on:
It also has the second strongest detached housing market, behind only South Australia —
That does grate on me a little bit —
and has seen a marked improvement in multi-units activity entering the pipeline.
It is very clear that Western Australia's hard work and the reforms that we introduced are now paying and having effect. The HIA scorecard, which gives us second only to South Australia, builds on the concept data that says that we are leading the nation. It builds on ABS data; it builds on all that data that shows that we are leading the nation—or very high up there—in relation to completions and approvals. We are doing that because we also have a federal partner, through the Housing Australia Future Fund, that is accelerating the delivery of social and affordable housing. We contrast that with the opposite side, where the Liberals and Nationals at a federal level promise to gut, in total, all funding for social and affordable housing programs in Australia. That was their election commitment, and did we hear anything from the state Liberals or Nationals? Did we hear anything about the loss of direct funding or other HAFF funding to get significant projects over the line? It was crickets. It was zero. This is the point that I always make. There is only one side of politics in Western Australia that is absolutely committed to boosting housing supply, to boosting social housing and boosting affordable housing, and the statistics from independent, credible authorities like the Housing Industry Association show that our plan is working.
