Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Housing and Minister for the Status of Women. What has been the impact of the government’s nation-building commitment to build and repair social housing on employment for builders and tradespeople?

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

I thank the member for Wakefield. I know from visits to his electorate that he is very excited about the repairs and maintenance being done to 155 homes in his electorate at a cost of $11.1 million and about the stage 1 construction of 78 new dwellings in his electorate at a value of $14.4 million. Builders and tradies around the country have been telling me that the government’s commitment to building social housing through the economic stimulus package has really helped them weather the worst international economic conditions in three-quarters of a century. In fact, at a newly built home I visited with the member for Blaxland, one of the supervisors of the company that had built that home, Adam Iacono, told me that 52 individual people, including three apprentices, had worked on that dwelling at various times. Two of them had been kept on because this new work had come through and one extra apprentice had been put on because of the new work.

Yesterday in Canberra, Stuart Sampson from Vogue Constructions told me that they had put on extra staff, too—one extra full-time member and one extra part-time member—because of the stimulus package. He also said that the subcontractors that they were working with had nine apprentices working on this site. At Chelsea in Melbourne’s south-east, Charlton Knight from Blue Bay Painters won a contract to paint 20 houses, and because of that he put on two extra staff. In Adelaide, Mr Don Belperio, the owner of Lodge Construction and Building, told me:

Building work has picked up since the stimulus money. It was slacking off earlier in the year. I have had to put on more subcontractors—electricians, plasterers, concreters, ironworkers, floor covering specialists, gyprockers and labourers.

It is great to hear about those companies right around Australia putting on extra people to do the extra work that is coming through the social housing building.

One of the other things that we wanted to do through the social housing stimulus package spend is look at projects that were struggling for funds to complete the projects because of the credit crunch and say to the states and territories, ‘If you can prepurchase some of these homes from these projects that were stalled, perhaps we can get the whole project going; perhaps we can support employment in that way.’ I am very happy to report that that is exactly what is happening. I am very happy to say that we estimate that an additional 2,000 private dwellings have been built because of our investment in social housing. Projects have been able to proceed because states and territories have been able to prepurchase some of these dwellings. Whole projects have proceeded.

I will give just one example. In the member for Port Adelaide’s electorate, at Mawson Lakes, I met a terrific woman, Fairlie Delbridge, the managing director of Delcooke Property Group, which is building, I think, 20 new units there. She told me:

I had made a large investment in getting this development going. At the preliminary stage of the development I had only nine presales. Then the global financial crisis hit and I couldn’t get funding. Banks stopped lending. By the time the stimulus package was announced, I had 12 presales but the project still wasn’t bankable.

Normally, of course, it would have been, but the credit crunch meant that it was not.

When Housing South Australia purchased five units, it absolutely got my development over the line. With 17 presales it made the project eminently bankable. It green-lighted my whole project.

That is exactly the type of flow-on effect we hoped this would have, and we calculate that it involved an extra 2,000 properties—extra jobs for tradies and apprentices around the country and extra affordable homes for Australian families.