The Northern Territory has asked the Australian government to urgently fund new homes and upgrades on traditional Aboriginal homelands, where people are living in “dilapidated houses for shelter, in severely overcrowded conditions”.
Chansey Paech, the Territory’s Remote Housing Minister, said the current model for 500 NT homelands was “not sustainable” and some communities have not received new housing or upgrades for decades.
In a letter to federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt, Mr Paech said he recently visited Emu Point homelands, 200 kilometres south-west of Darwin, where “most houses are derelict and residents are living in tents”.
“One house I visited was accommodating 23 residents, with only three bedrooms,” he said.
“This is sadly a common story for housing across many homelands in the Northern Territory.”
Mr Paech said he had asked for a meeting with Mr Wyatt to discuss the “dire need” for housing in homelands, where about 10,000 people are living.
Minister says previous homelands agreement short-changed residents
Under an agreement with the federal government in 2015, the NT government took responsibility for providing municipal and essential services to the NT’s homelands in exchange for a one-off payment of $155 million.
But the NT government claims the agreement did not cover housing, leaving requests for new homes or upgrades in limbo for years.
In the September sittings in NT parliament, Mr Paech said the agreement “short-changed remote homelands residents” and “we need to right that wrong”.
He said homelands were “places of deep spiritual and cultural connection” and “have an amazing opportunity to be economic generators for Aboriginal people and to keep culture and identity strong”.
Mr Paech said there was a misconception that the NT government was responsible for building new houses on homelands.
“The responsibility for new houses on homelands still sits with the Australian government,” he said.
But a spokesperson in Mr Wyatt’s office told the ABC the “NT government remains responsible for housing, including on homelands”.
The spokesperson said no decision had been made about future funding for homelands but that Mr Wyatt would respond to Mr Paech’s request “shortly”.
NT government re-negotiating building timeline on housing agreement
Meanwhile, the NT government is negotiating with Canberra over its existing remote housing funding agreement as it scrambles to meet the proposed building schedule.
It has previously faced criticism over its delayed rollout of its remote community housing program.
In 2019, the Australian government agreed to provide the NT with more than half a billion dollars over five years to construct almost 2,000 new bedrooms in remote communities, as part of a program called the National Partnership for Remote Housing NT.
The funding was in addition to the NT government’s promise to spend $1.1 billion over 10 years to reduce high rates of overcrowding in remote communities.
The agreement set out a so-called “milestone” schedule under which Commonwealth payments would be linked to the number of bedrooms built, but the NT has not been able to keep up with the schedule relating to new builds.
It has been hitting other targets related to tenancy management and Aboriginal employment.
Mr Paech attributed the delays to a lack of serviced lots on which to build houses and delays in signing the original agreement because of a bureaucratic stoush over its terms.
“That has obviously caused the program to not deliver the amount that people were expecting in the first years, but this program was always designed to scale up,” he said.
The NT government said at the end of August it had built 1,144 bedrooms, which includes both Australian government and NT funding.
Under the agreement, the NT government is able to claim the cost of up to 1,950 bedrooms from the federal government if they are able to complete them before the agreement expires in June 2023.
A spokesperson for the Housing department indicated at the end of June this year, only 299 bedrooms had been allocated to the Australian government funding stream so far.
Mr Paech promised the program was speeding up and information provided by the housing department suggested the NT government projects it will complete 3,700 bedrooms — including all 1,950 of the federally funded rooms — by June 2023.
“Acknowledge that we are working with the Commonwealth on those milestones and I have asked as well, that while we’re looking at those milestones, we could look at expanding that agreement to take in homelands,” Mr Paech said.
Mr Wyatt, who last year described the NT’s rollout of the program as “slow” and “unacceptable”, was not available for an interview.
His spokesperson said: “The Commonwealth is engaging closely with the NT government to accelerate its construction program to meet the commitments already in place under the National Partnership for Remote Housing NT.”
Separately, the Australian National Audit Office is auditing the administration of the agreement. ABC