There’s been plenty of attention recently on the Albanese government’s First Home Guarantee scheme, where the government acts as a guarantor, allowing first-home buyers to purchase a property with a small deposit, without needing expensive Lenders Mortgage Insurance.
However, Anthony Albanese’s signature housing policy, a $10 billion fund to boost affordable housing for low-income tenants, is facing mounting criticism, with a federal audit being announced and an investigation by the ABC revealing major delays and ballooning costs.
The details
The Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), announced in 2021, was billed as the centrepiece of Labor’s plan to tackle the housing crisis by helping to build 40,000 homes for low-income earners over five years.
But nearly four years later, the fund has yet to complete a single new home from scratch.
According to Treasury data, only about 500 homes have been delivered since the fund was formally established in November 2023, a small fraction of the 40,000 promised by mid-2029.
Documents obtained by the ABC’s Tom Crowley revealed the program is running behind schedule and costing more than expected, with the average federal contribution exceeding $750,000 per home and topping $1 million in some cases.
Audit and accountability
The Australian National Audit Office has now launched a nine-month audit into the HAFF, examining Treasury’s effectiveness in designing and delivering the fund.
In a letter to Coalition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg, who has been pushing for an audit of the fund, the Federal Auditor-General Caralee McLiesh confirmed she would be assessing “the effectiveness of the Department of the Treasury’s design and delivery of the HAFF.”
A spokesman for Housing Minister Clare O’Neil says the decision by the Auditor-General to audit the HAFF was “normal for a program of its size and impact.”
The audit announcement follows the resignation of Carol Austin, the chairwoman of Housing Australia, the organisation tasked with delivering the scheme.
Her departure comes after a 2023 workplace investigation, which found no formal breaches of the staff code of conduct, and her subsequent denial of bullying allegations before a Senate committee.
Slow progress and high costs
When Anthony Albanese first unveiled the Housing Australia Future Fund, it carried deep personal significance for a prime minister who grew up in public housing.
“The home I grew up in gave me and my mum so much more than somewhere to sleep,” he said in 2021.
“It gave us pride, dignity and security, and gave me a future.”
The HAFF’s model is designed to stretch government dollars by investing the original $10 billion and using the returns to subsidise rents on new affordable housing projects over 25 years.
But the rollout has been plagued by delays, as Housing Australia struggled to scale up staff, process applications and coordinate partnerships with community housing providers and private investors.
By late 2024, funding had been approved for 13,700 homes, well short of the five-year goal.
Most of the 370 homes delivered by mid-2025 were “turnkey” dwellings; already built by private developers before HAFF involvement.
Officials have blamed construction bottlenecks, labour shortages and complex financing arrangements, while community housing providers say projects are increasingly unviable without much larger subsidies.
According to the ABC’s analysis, first-round HAFF funding involved availability payments averaging $683,000 per home, plus an additional $70,000 in interest-free loans.
That’s roughly triple the $250,000 per home originally modelled by the Grattan Institute, which proposed the scheme.
Super funds and criticism
One of the biggest funding recipients is Assemble, backed by super funds AustralianSuper and HESTA, which secured $2 billion for 2,791 homes.
Opposition housing spokesman, Andrew Bragg, alleges that “the government has structured HAFF availability payments to suit the super lobby.”
The government rejects that characterisation, arguing that superannuation funds are critical partners in achieving the scale needed to meet Australia’s housing shortfall.
Targets under pressure
The HAFF is one of several programs underpinning Labor’s broader goal of building 1.2 million homes by mid-2029, a target shared with state governments.
However, the Treasury has warned that this national goal is unlikely to be met.
The ABC’s Tom Crowley found that round two of HAFF funding, focused on state-led projects, has not proven cheaper than the first, with average costs rising to $758,000 per home.
A third round is being prepared, prioritising larger-scale developments capable of delivering more homes.
But for now, the HAFF’s early performance underscores the complexity of fixing Australia’s housing crisis.
As Tom Crowley puts it, the Albanese government is learning that “speed, quality and value for money do not necessarily go hand in hand.”