THE federal government has quietly - but radically - shifted the boundaries of the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program, conceding that its plan to build 750 houses in 16 remote Northern Territory communities will require significant additional investment.
With only 11 houses completed during the program's first 2 1/2 years, The Weekend Australian has undertaken a detailed analysis of the progress under the nation's largest single investment in remote housing.
A confidential document detailing progress under the SIHIP reveals that only seven of the 16 communities that were to receive 750 new houses among them have signed long-term leases with the federal government.
Those seven communities - Nguiu, Groote Eylandt townships, Wadeye, Maningrida, Gunbalanya and Galiwinku, as well as the Alice Springs town camps, - are set to receive 629 houses by 2013.
A further nine communities - Ngukurr, Numbulwar, Gapuwiyak, Milingimbi, Ramingining and Yirrkala in Arnhem Land, and Yuendemu, Hermannsburg and Lajamanu in central Australia - are yet to sign the long-term leases, which give security of tenure for housing investment.
Their housing packages are currently "unallocated", according to a confidential progress report on the SIHIP given to a Northern Territory committee, the Council of Territory Co-operation.
The delay for these towns is more serious because they are among an elite group of communities nominated by the NT government to be "growth towns".
The Territory growth towns policy - supposed to lift infrastructure standards in remote indigenous ghetto towns to that of similar-sized regional country towns elsewhere in Australia - was yesterday savaged by the former Labor minister who had championed it.
Former NT indigenous affairs minister Alison Anderson labelled the growth town policy a sham that had been hurriedly announced by Paul Henderson's government with scant funding attached.
"I launched it for Henderson without knowing the figures," said Ms Anderson, now an independent MP. "We just launched the policy without real dollar figures attached to it."
Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has moved to reassure the nine communities, which make up some of the NT's largest remote "hub" communities, they will not miss out on their fair share of the remote housing pie by having to share 129 houses.
Centres such as Wadeye will receive 105 houses on their own.
A spokeswoman for Ms Macklin said yesterday SIHIP would deliver on its targets to build
750 new houses, as well as
carry out 230 rebuilds and 2500 refurbishments.
"The program remains on track to deliver on the SIHIP targets over the period to 2013 within the $672m budget," she said.
But the federal government has conceded it will need to dip further into the $5.5 billion National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing - which includes the SIHIP as the "first tranche of funding" - to pay for further housing in the nine communities yet to sign long-term leases. The NT has been allocated $1.7bn, over 10 years, out of the $5.5bn national partnership agreement.
"This national partnership funding will deliver new and refurbished housing in the NT over and above the SIHIP targets of 750 new houses, 230 rebuilds and 2500 refurbishments," Ms Macklin's office said yesterday.
"This will enable the governments to capitalise on economies of scale and other efficiencies associated with large-scale building works. Packages of works will be allocated progressively, community by community, as leases are finalised and preparatory planning in the communities has been undertaken."
Fixing remote housing is a key plank of the federal government's ambitious bid to close the gap in life expectancy between black and white Australia within a generation. Ms Macklin has staked much of her political capital on the attainment of long-term leases that underpin secure investment in housing and infrastructure.
But the slow and excessively bureaucratic progress of the SIHIP - attacked as a bonanza for consultants - has dogged the government for the past year.
The Weekend Australian first highlighted the widespread wastage and bureaucratic red tape that was strangling the SIHIP in July last year, when it was revealed that as little as 30 per cent of the housing funds would be spent on bricks and mortar.
After weeks of revelations that the program was seriously off-track, Ms Macklin ordered a review of the program, which found that after a $43m spend, not one house had been built.
Lease negotiations are proving challenging for the federal and NT governments, which are insisting long-term leases be signed in remote communities before a sod is turned on building works.
Several communities have given their "in principle" agreement to leases but there is bitter division over the land handover.
Former NT Labor indigenous affairs minister Alison Anderson, now an independent, yesterday backed the communities that were holding out on signing leases.
"These communities are taking the step of not signing on the dotted line for any kind of leasing on their land until they know exactly what injection of funds will be going to their communities," Ms Anderson said.
