The government is reviewing whether thousands of state-owned homes occupied by public officials continue to serve the public interest.
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson has ordered an investigation into more than 6,000 government-owned residential properties and wants a strategy to sell or repurpose those that are no longer required for official duties.
The department says the move could reduce costs to taxpayers and improve the management of the state’s property portfolio.
Macpherson says maintaining the properties places a significant financial burden on the department, while many officials already receive housing allowances as part of their employment benefits.
Macpherson says, “The problem is that public works has to maintain them, and pay for the rates, and water, and electricity…, and that also includes maintenance. So, you can actually imagine now that figure is far higher- and our view is that we as public works and certainly as government shouldn’t have the situation where we have all of these residential houses across the country- when in fact those officials are already getting housing allowances, as part of their benefits. So, those housing allowances would go either towards rent, or to a home loan.”
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