O’Neil reads riot act to agency as Labor seeks to keep housing probe secret

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil read the riot act to bureaucrats failing to deliver Labor’s agenda with speed, according to fresh documents that shed new light on the bumpy rollout of big-spending policies designed to alleviate the nation’s housing shortage.

Coalition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg has labelled Housing Australia, the embattled agency overseeing the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, a “dysfunctional hellhole” as the Senate rejected a bid by Labor on Wednesday to keep secret a probe into allegations of incompetence and bullying in the agency.

The HAFF, designed to reverse decades of government underinvestment in housing, did not meet the government’s ambitions during Labor’s first term as construction costs soared.

O’Neil met the board of Housing Australia in October last year and sent a strong signal about her dissatisfaction.

“We need to move much more quickly,” she told the agency’s top brass, including former chair Carol Austin, according to a confidential meeting brief document obtained by this masthead.

“I will do my bit to get faster decisions through government and to support your team having the resources you need. I also need Housing Australia to carefully consider your processes and models to find efficiencies.”

The HAFF is a core part of the government’s $43 billion suite of measures to address the issues of home ownership and social housing, a top-order concern at the last election when the Coalition offered cheaper mortgages and the Greens pledged rent controls.

This masthead reported last month that several executives had quit Housing Australia in protest over alleged bullying and dysfunction inside the agency, which whistleblowers claimed was leading to poor delivery of the HAFF and other programs.

The whistleblower’s complaints led to a secret investigation that found chair Carol Austin did not breach the code of conduct but oversaw an organisation with “concerning … challenges”. The probe led to the hiring of a new chief executive with years of experience in housing.

The secret report into bullying allegations and incompetence at the top of Housing Australia has not been released. Bragg won the support of the Senate to have it made public, but O’Neil rejected the Senate’s request.

“The disclosure of the … review would damage the privacy and reputation of individuals referred to in the review,” O’Neil said in a letter on November 12.

Bragg argued O’Neil’s reluctance to match the Senate’s demands was not good enough.

“Taxpayers funded a $24,000 report into Labor’s housing hellhole. The Senate has voted for its production. It is buried deep underneath Jim Chalmers’ Treasury building. The most secretive government in 30 years must exhume it,” he said.

“Labor’s $10 billion housing boondoggle has failed to build and seems only able to buy homes so far. It is a shambles. In some cases, Canberra will fund investors to profit for 25 years from HAFF homes. This inflates the taxpayer burden to up to $1.3 million per dwelling.”

The government says the cost of each home is well under $1 million.

Since O’Neil’s strong remarks to the Austin-run board, the government claims to have turned the corner on the HAFF. In the first round of funding for new homes, applications took nine months, compared with just over two months in round two.

The HAFF has now completed 889 homes but the opposition has criticised Housing Australia for purchasing 333 of these from private developers. It is also buying about a third of a planned 18,650 homes.

More than 204,000 Australians have bought their first home under the five per cent deposit scheme, which Labor expanded recently and may slightly hike prices, according to government modelling.

Housing Australia has a five-year plan to create a total of 40,000 social homes following decades of state and federal underfunding. It is designed to help meet Labor’s ambitious target of 1.2 million new houses being built by the end of the decade, but it is already at least 60,000 homes behind schedule.

The HAFF is being forensically audited by the Australian National Audit Office, which probes many government programs.

Voters viewed the Coalition as the party better able to manage the housing crisis earlier this year, according to this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor. However, as Labor campaigned on its election pledges, it overtook the opposition and now has a slight edge.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.