‍Appointment of Housing Australia Chair

‍Appointment of Housing Australia Chair

The Coalition notes the appointment of Ann Sherry AO as the new Chair of Housing Australia.

Housing Australia is the worst hellhole of waste and dysfunction.

It has failed to build the homes Labor promised. It has failed to build homes cheaply and efficiently. It has been buying homes Australians could themselves own. It has failed to manage conflicts of interest. It has become a honeypot for vested interests.

Housing Australia has failed basic management tests as set out by the KordaMentha Review, which found the “organisation is not yet aligned in its accountability for delivery.”

The KordaMentha Review said there is a need to “urgently review HAFF Round 3 approval processes” to accelerate approvals. This is a damning indictment given that HAFF Round 3 is the “largest funding round to date” and supposedly focuses on “accelerating delivery.”

After three years of operation, the Auditor-General also found that the HAFF only oversaw 1,432 homes - of these, 670 were not even new. This is way off the 40,000-homes target by mid-2029.

This lumbering bureaucracy is a terrible way to build homes, especially given Labor’s high taxes and unending red tape.

The fact that builders are collapsing left, right and centre shows how bad the building environment has become under Labor.

We expect proper processes will now unfold and the new Chair will resign from other positions which generate real or perceived conflicts of interest.

[Ends]

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