The Liberal Government’s Homes Tasmania Bill is an abandonment of their responsibility to all Tasmanians and raises more questions than answers.
Under the proposed changes, Housing Tasmania would be disbanded and a new stand-alone, statutory authority would be established, to be governed by a board made up of community members as well as commercial private sector players.
Labor has been pushing for years now for meaningful action to fix Tasmania’s housing crisis, but this Bill has more unknowns than knowns and there are too many risks that it will make the situation worse.
For such significant structural change to the public sector, this change has not been widely consulted – not in the wider state service, not in the community housing sector and certainly not in the public.
Creating a commercial board to manage public and social housing is a fundamental philosophical shift away from the fact that housing is a core moral responsibility of government.
Under the Bill, the term ‘housing provider’ will be expanded to include private sector construction companies and developers. These same companies could also be represented on the board while approving decisions to gain contracts to build properties which raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
This runs the risk of corporatisation of a public responsibility.
While the government says the new body will be more agile and responsive, this is not the case – in reality there will likely be further delays in work done by the new authority, more red tape and more road blocks.
Nobody denies that big changes are needed to deal with the deepening housing crisis but putting housing at arm’s length of government is not the right answer and runs the risk of making things worse.
Ella Haddad MP
Shadow Housing Minister
