Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Housing) Share this | Hansard source

The Housing Affordability Fund is a $512 million investment. We expect some applications from state governments but, more commonly, the applications will come from local government. They may well come from local government in partnership with particular developers. The application process will be a competitive process. We are not distributing the funds on a population basis—so much to a particular state, depending on the population of that state. We are distributing on a competitive basis.

The competitive basis is what delivers the biggest saving at the end of the day for new home buyers comparable to the Commonwealth investment that is put in. We are hoping that our investment will not just enable us to bring down one aspect of the cost of buying a new home—some of the fees and charges that local and state governments impose—but also in part drive reform of some of the processes that are adding costs along the way. An example of that is the electronic development application money that we have set aside, the $30 million, to encourage local government to not just transfer their existing system from a paper based application system to an electronic system but also, as has been done in some areas where this has been done already, simplify and streamline that development application process.

So we will see costs coming down, lower fees and charges, where we are able to help with little bits of infrastructure—we are not talking about railway lines; this fund is not designed for major infrastructure but for little bits and pieces here and there—or through driving reform that reduces the time it takes to take a property from the conceptual stage to the market stage and thus reduce the holding costs on that land and that property.

Can I also just mention very quickly to the member for Farrer that the consultations on the green paper that you asked about earlier—the one that your services would be going to would be the one in Albury-Wodonga, I imagine; is that right?

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