Ideas@TheCentre
Banging on about homeownership is starting to have an effect but will bureaucrats bungle it?
Back in 2005, when the CIS first started writing about Indigenous issues, the lack of private property rights on Indigenous land was identified as a key factor for the deprivation and dysfunction of Indigenous communities.
Thankfully, governments are slowly waking up to the importance of private homeownership on Indigenous lands. Earlier this year, the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) released an issues paper titled 'Indigenous Home Ownership'; this week, the Queensland government released a discussion paper titled 'Home Ownership on Indigenous Communal Lands.'
But just because governments are beginning to recognise the importance of private homeownership on Indigenous land does not mean they know how to implement it.
In the Northern Territory, the Howard government's decision to have the head lease held by a government entity (Office of Township Leasing) resulted in only one community – the Tiwi Islands – accepting the offer of a 99-year township lease. The operating expense to administer this lease costs taxpayers around $450,000 a year. A much better approach would have been to allow individual communities to hold the head lease for their community.
Similarly, the Queensland government's private homeownership solution also appears unnecessarily bureaucratic and costly.
Homes that could have been built for $200,000 to $250,000 by private contractors have cost Australian taxpayers $400,000–$500,000 to build. The proposal to sell these houses to 'selected' householders of Indigenous communities for $80,000–$150,000 is a big discount on a taxpayer funded investment. The Department of Communities can choose not to sell these homes; in this case, only old social houses will be available for residents to buy. Some of these houses would fail to meet occupancy standards, and in most suburbs of Australia would be bulldozed. Our proposal to give old social houses to long-term tenants who have been paying rents for years at zero cost so that they can demolish them and build their own homes seems more reasonable.
Under the Queensland model, corruption seems inevitable. Councils can sell a house to someone other than the existing tenant. Does this mean that long-term tenants can be kicked out of their 'homes' so that councils can sell houses to their cronies?
The Queensland government is also valuing the land with prices ranging from $4,000 to $25,000. The land cost as a fee to cover the cost of providing services to the block – such as sewerage and water – seems fair but will the government also try extracting money from traditional owners for their own land in places where there are no services?
There are a lot of unanswered questions with the Queensland government's scheme. We can only hope that its flaws won’t jeopardise the important goal of private homeownership on Indigenous lands being realised.
Sara Hudson is a policy analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.
