Chief Minister Eva Lawler and Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro set out their housing agendas at a Property Council NT Leaders Debate just weeks before the Territory heads to the polls.
Chief Minister Lawler used the opportunity to announce that, if reelected, the government would introduce a stand-alone department called Territory Homes to facilitate the building of thousands of new homes. The department will take on the responsibility of housing, planning, and private home approvals from DIPL.
This has been a key recommendation of the NT Property Council, as laid out in its Deloitte report “Incentivising Investment in the NT”.
“We are at one of the most exciting times around housing in Australia,” Chief Minister Lawler told attendees.
“We have the target from the federal government on 11,400 new homes in the territory, and that’s social housing, affordable housing, but also private builds. We need an agency, a standalone agency to drive the delivery of that.
“Besides that, we also have the $4 billion remote housing project as well. Our government has delivered on the $1 billion projects that we’ve had previously, we now move on to $4 billion worth of housing in the territory.”
Chief Minister Lawler also outlined the government’s commitment to a establish a $60,000 first home builder grant for Territory residents who build new homes or buy and apartment or townhouse if reelected.
Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro said if elected she would institute a program of homeowner grants for new and existing homes.
“We will support grants of $50,000 for first home builders to deliberately create new stock in the market. But we recognise we can’t create a logjam in the system, so we will also give $10,000 to first home buyers looking to buy an existing home,” she said.
“The game changer is this, we will also give for anyone who currently owns a home, has owned a home before perhaps as a divorcee, $30,000 to build another home again, delivering on that commitment to create more stock. It also then creates opportunities for people to rightsize.
“We have deliberately and very proudly targeted that scheme to be not just for Australian citizens, but the permanent residents as well, because we want people migrating to this country to bed down their roots in the Northern Territory, give people a reason to stay and give people a reason to come here.”
She also discussed Country Liberal Pary’s plan to slash commercial-to-residential building conversion approval timeframe by 50 per cent
“We’ve been very supportive of the Property Council, which is why we have committed also to having a streamlined fast track pathway to convert vacant commercial space into temporary student accommodation. It is something we need vitally to underpin our CBD and international student numbers.”
The NT election will take place on Saturday 24 August.