Housing policy needs a bipartisan strategy and stable governance arrangements, senior officials say

A bipartisan national housing and homelessness strategy would support more effective policy and greater coordination of effort across all states and territories, a new AHURI report suggests.

Drawing on interviews with 12 former and current senior state and territory housing officials, the report provides fresh insight on the optimal ‘machinery of government’ – the administrative, bureaucratic or institutional arrangements – for delivering housing policy.

The research participants agreed a bipartisan national strategy supported by appropriate institutional arrangements would help address Australia’s entrenched housing challenges.

There was a strong view that, unless a coordinated approach is taken to stabilise housing system structures within Australia’s federated system, partisan shifts in Commonwealth, state and territory housing policies will continue to undermine the effectiveness of outcomes.

“Elevating housing to a national priority and establishing a bipartisan national housing strategy, aligned with state and territory activity, would ensure that everyone was working towards a common purpose and in a harmonised way,” explained report lead author, Dr Kathleen Flanagan from the University of Tasmania.

Support for a standalone housing authority

The research participants had wide and varying experience of different structural arrangements for the delivery of housing-related functions.

While they acknowledged that no structure is perfect, there was considerable consensus on what elements were most effective.

“The preferred arrangement for housing is a standalone agency drawing together as many housing and homelessness policy levers as is feasible, with relative budgetary and decision-making autonomy,” Dr Flanagan said.

This was preferable to the integration of housing within a larger welfare department, where it must compete for resources with other service delivery areas like health.

It was also preferable to a model in which responsibilities for asset and tenancy management, respectively, were split across divisions or even departments.

Culture, leadership and stability enable success

In the experience of participants, the culture of the organisation and the quality of its leadership were often more significant than how it was structured.

“Culture and leadership can mean the difference between success and failure. But their effect can be undercut by too-frequent changes in machinery of government arrangements that lead to loss or change of staff, institutional knowledge and key expertise,” Dr Flanagan said.

Participants criticised the frequency and rationale for many machinery of government changes.

As one participant said, ‘Every time you restructure with a new minister or a new agency, you probably lose a year or two.’

Rather than make repeated adjustments to the machinery of government, the research found a better approach is to settle on a feasible and effective structure and allow it – and the people working within it – the longevity and stability to delivery better policy outcomes.

The report, ‘Administering Australian housing policy: practitioner perspectives’, was undertaken for AHURI by researchers from the University of Tasmania and Swinburne University of Technology.