Mounting evidence that HAFF is a $10B failure

The Housing Australia Future Fund behalf was sold to Australians as the federal government’s signature answer to the nation’s housing crisis.

It was supposed to deliver tens of thousands of desperately needed homes while proving that Canberra could tackle one of the country’s biggest challenges but instead it’s become a case study in bureaucratic failure, unrealistic promises and poor execution.

Now the latest report from the Australian National Audit Office which was released on the twenty third of July confirms what many in the housing sector have been saying for some time.

The government’s flagship housing program is nowhere near meeting its targets.

Despite controlling a ten billion dollars fund and operating since twenty twenty three, the HAF has delivered just one thousand four hundred and thirty two homes less than four percent of its promised forty thousand dwellings.

With only three years remaining to reach that target, the numbers simply don’t stack up.

So the half is halfway through its six year period for the delivery of forty thousand dwellings and it’s managed just one thousand four hundred and thirty two and that quite frankly is hopeless.

Even more concerning is that Treasury knew this outcome was likely almost from the beginning.

The audit found that officials warned as early as March twenty twenty three that the targets were unlikely to be achieved.

Independent consultants also questioned whether the modelling behind the government’s promises were far too optimistic, yet the program proceeded regardless.

The Auditor General’s criticism extends well beyond missed targets.

The report points to insufficient transparency over delivery costs and outcomes as well as governance arrangements and inadequate oversight.

Truffy didn’t even establish many of the program’s governance and monitoring systems until well after the scheme had commenced and that’s not how you manage a ten billion dollars public investment fund.

Now the problems don’t stop there.

Housing Australia itself appears to be struggling internally.

Staff redundancies, high employee turnover, executive upheaval and the abolition of its independent credit committee highly inspired confidence that the organisation is operating efficiently and well.

Removing an external panel of experienced banking and risk specialists and replacing it with internal assessments raises legitimate questions about governance and accountability.

It looks suspiciously like marking your own homework.

Meanwhile Australians continue to experience record rents, critically low vacancy rates and worsening affordability while the government’s flagship response remains bogged down in administration and bureaucracy.

Housing minister Claire O’Neill argues that the construction sector is facing one of its toughest periods in decades and there’s no doubt that builders are confronting labour shortages, rising costs and planning delays.

Well those challenges were hardly a surprise.

Anyone familiar with Australia’s housing market knew that these constraints existed long before the half was announced and kicked off its operations.

Good policy accounts for reality rather than pretending that it doesn’t exist and this is the fundamental problem with the half that’s been built around political announcements rather than practical delivery.

Grand promises have been made but the systems, governance and implementation have consistently fallen behind.

It’s been a saga of overpromising and under delivering.

Australia desperately needs more homes.

More specifically, it desperately needs more affordable homes.

What it doesn’t need is another expensive bureaucracy producing reports, restructures, governance reviews and excuses while housing shortages continue to get worse.

The HEF was meant to be Labour’s flagship housing achievement.

Three years into the program, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that it has instead become one of the biggest housing policy disappointments in recent memory.