Release of ANAO Audit into Housing Boondoggle

The Auditor-General has laid bare how Labor’s signature Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) has failed to deliver.

The ANAO report on the Treasury’s Design and Delivery of the Housing Australia Future Fund and the National Housing Accord Facility, found “there has been insufficient transparency on program delivery, costs and impact” within Labor’s housing fund.

This scrutiny is welcome. For years, Labor has blocked questions about what the $10 billion HAFF does and how many homes have been built or bought.

Australians were promised 40,000 social and affordable homes. Instead, the ANAO confirmed that, after almost 3 years: “1,432 homes of the 40,000 target have been built. Of these, 762 were new homes constructed by housing providers and 670 were…purchased”. Treasury has also repeatedly advised Labor that “the delivery targets under the HAFF were unlikely to be met”, and that the 40,000 target is rated as “high” risk.

So only a handful of houses have been built, and just under half are not new. Buying homes is not building homes. It does nothing to fix Australia's housing supply crisis. The revelation about buying, not building, also contradicts the evidence given to Senate Estimates by Minister Tim Ayres.

The ANAO report further reveals that:

• There have been no detailed program objectives designed to establish parameters for measuring the success of program delivery.
• A planned approach to measuring and monitoring the ongoing performance of the HAFF is yet to be established.
• Risk management arrangements are insufficient. Treasury did not have finalised arrangements for assuring Housing Australia’s delivery until May 2026.
• Treasury did not consider how comparable programs from international jurisdictions may have provided insights into the design and delivery of HAFF.

The ANAO strongly recommends that additional transparency is urgently needed. It says that: “Public reporting of program performance is limited”, and that Treasury needs to “publicly and clearly reports on program performance, including the performance of sub-activities and programs, as well as the overall program.”

I will be introducing a Bill to do exactly this when Parliament resumes in August, the: Housing Australia Amendment (Transparency and Reporting) Bill 2026.

I strongly urge Labor to support this Bill, if it really believes in the Auditor-General’s findings.

This is all proof that Labor’s housing scheme is a nightmare that has squandered scarce taxpayer money and failed to build the houses desperately needed by Australians.

[Ends]