Opinion & Commentary
Would-be Indigenous homeowners abandoned
The federal budget's redirection of $56 million of unused capital from its failed Home Ownership on Indigenous Land program to another housing scheme for Aborigines in cities and towns is the final nail in the coffin for many remote indigenous Australians' dreams of home ownership.
It comes as no surprise they are not lining up to borrow from HOIL. This is not to say indigenous Australians living on indigenous land do not want to become homeowners.
It has more to do with the fact they can't because lease arrangements meant to facilitate home ownership have not worked. In 2006, the Howard government introduced changes to the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976 to enable 99-year township leases on communally owned indigenous land. But only one land council – the Tiwi Islands – agreed to a lease.
Rather than fixing the flaws in the lease scheme, the Rudd government largely has ignored the issue of home ownership, preferring to focus on securing 40 or 50-year block leases for public housing under its Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program. This is a shame because it is clear from problems with SIHIP that public housing should not remain the only option for remote communities.
This week, the Senate requested that the Auditor-General investigate waste and mismanagement in the $672m SIHIP. This followed a written answer in parliament to a question about how much each house had cost to renovate under this scheme. The government's response that it was not possible to disaggregate payments for individual communities or houses defied belief.
Adding insult to injury for remote indigenous people is the fact the government is now transferring money meant for them to indigenous people in urban and regional areas. This money will help urban indigenous Australians access low-interest home loans, even though some earn up to 125 per cent of the average wage.
The government was not very convincing when it said home ownership ‘must be among the choices available to all Australians’. Its redirection of funding to the Indigenous Business Australia home loans program signals it has given up pretending its rhetoric will become reality.
Sara Hudson is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.
