Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Under your government, Senator Scullion, very little progress was made. These programs include the longstanding Aboriginal Rental Housing Program, the Community Housing and Infrastructure Program—or CHIP—the National Aboriginal Health Strategy and some smaller niche programs. It was a complex network of programs to navigate. Annual grants did not encourage long-term planning and the management of the housing was further complicated by the Indigenous community housing organisations not actually owning the assets, as most discrete communities are located on inalienable communal land. For these housing organisations, property and tenancy management was difficult, sometimes poor, and rent revenues were often low. SIHIP actually demands that housing amongst the Northern Territory Indigenous population living in remote communities be effectively addressed by governments.

For 2007 the backlog for housing and related infrastructure in the bush was around $2.7 billion. When we came to government, we inherited from the Howard government a backlog of $2.7 billion. That figure was indicative of the chronic overcrowding experienced by many households across the Territory. It was and still remains a daunting prospect, and big changes are clearly needed for housing in the bush. We knew that in the Northern Territory housing of course underpins the creation of new markets in remote communities—it could be a source of sustainable economic development for remote townships and entire regions. With housing, jobs and skills can be created, enterprises would grow, markets in land and housing would emerge and private investment in communities would increase. SIHIP is the first housing program to set meaningful targets in addition to bricks-and-mortar targets. Community involvement and jobs now and for the future are critical, as is securing the value of assets with leases.

In September 2007, the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments struck up a memorandum of understanding for Indigenous housing, accommodation and related services that would see the Commonwealth—