“Recent comments by the Minister for Housing in the Kalgoorlie Miner (25 May 2022) critical of the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder are just another example of the gratuitous deflections by a desperate State Government,” Neil Thomson, Liberal member for the Mining and Pastoral Region said.
“It is incredibly frustrating to see such immature comments when we know the lack of social housing in the Goldfields is entirely the responsibility of the State.
“Recent decisions on development approvals by the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder have absolutely no bearing on the existing social housing waiting list.
“The fact is that Development WA is the State agency responsible for land releases in the Goldfields, not the City.
“But it was under Labor that the agency Development WA was created with the merger of LandCorp and the Metropolitan Development Authority, and this has resulted in yet another dysfunctional agency that has little interest in developing land where there isn’t a clear profit margin.
“We all know that higher civil construction costs in the regions mean it is impossible to deliver adequate urban land without strong leadership and support from the State.
“Furthermore, the Department of Communities, which is responsible for the construction and management of social housing, has lost its capacity to undertake large scale development and retain earnings income from land sales to reinvest into social housing under WA Labor. This has led to a disgraceful drop off in the number of social houses constructed in Western Australia.
The Department of Communities is now completely dysfunctional with its leadership being more focused on attacking its own senior staff in a pathetic attempt to suppress information about its own toxic culture, instead of focussing on its core role of social housing delivery.
“The cheap shot from the Minister to deflect attention to the City of Kalgoorlie Boulder is just another desperate attempt to avoid scrutiny of WA Labor’s failures, Mr Thomson said.