Dave Donald

So it's absolutely important to build new houses.

Community are crying out for it and it's absolutely needed.

But what's needed is houses that work.

New houses, but importantly, old houses.

I mean, majority of people in the Northern Territory, for example, remote communities, they're

Five and a half thousand houses.

The majority of people are going to be living in those five and a half thousand houses for the next 20 years of their life or for the lifespan of those houses.

Now that is where the health impact needs to come.

So we need to lift up all the amenity of every house in a community in order to have that true impact.

Yeah, look, what needs to happen, and there is a grassroots shift that's started, started by land councils, Aboriginal housing providers and advocacy groups to shift away from this idea of managing a house based on a reactive basis.

That's right.

And so it relies on somebody getting on the blower, ringing up, saying, my shower's not working.

Now, we know from our data, between 1% and 3% of faults get reported by residents.

That's the faults that we found on our projects.

Yeah, it's either that or just a lack of understanding in the system.

I mean, it's an incredibly expensive way to run a housing organisation.

You know, travel, for example, cost or remote community for emergency repair takes up to 96% of the cost of that item.

I mean, that makes no economic or health sense.

So there needs to be a shift towards a cyclical scheduled maintenance program.

And that's where, you're right, Priya, where people will, trades will come out to a community.