February 4, 2025 • 17 mins
The Government’s shaking up social housing, yesterday announcing a plan to get Kāinga Ora back on track.
They're set to sell off high-priced homes in an effort to bring its books down, the plan including the sale of around 900 homes a year.
The money will then go to more low-cost, denser places with greater demand, as well as more single person dwellings as opposed to larger homes.
Kāinga Ora Board Chair Simon Moutter joined Kerre Woodham to discuss what the changes mean for the agency and for those in need of social housing.
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Kerrywood and Morning's podcast from News Talks.
He'd be.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
As promised. Simon moved to the Caying Order board chairs
in studio for the next half hour. The government's shaking
up social housing, as you well know, yesterday announced a
plan to get caying order back on track. High priced
or high value caying Order homes will be sold off
in an effort to bring down its books. The new
cost saving plan includes the sale of around nine hundred homes,
(00:34):
with the money to go to more low cost, denser
places with greater demand. Simon Motor joins me now and
I'm just going to here we go.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Very good morning to you, Good morning to you.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Carry So what can the board do? What can the
board actually do to affect operations on the ground.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Look, the board is the governing body of the organization
and is kying or is really an agent of government
and its job is to build and manage social housing
as allocated to it by the Ministry of Housing. And
so that's the job we do in it. At the
board level, we shape the overall strategy. What are the
(01:16):
right areas of focus, Where should we allocate resources, where's
the greatest ways we can make a difference how do
we get good value for the taxpayer in the choices
we make, the policies around the type of facilities and buildings.
We create the model of how we support tenants because
we're not social workers where tenancy managers. But I think
(01:40):
often the public might have a view that where social workers,
we're not. That's the role of Ministry of Social Development.
So the board creates a framework and what we've done
here with this new plan is re architect a narrower
focus for the organization. All big organizations are better when
they're focus is now. They perform much better. When you
(02:02):
fragment focus, you get poor performance. Is a narrower focus.
There are thirty five initiatives outline in the Planet's available
on our website. It was published yesterday and i'd welcome
people to.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Have a look.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
You can see the level of detail that's gone into
here's the things that we're going to do better and
it's some of the changes we're going to make. So
the board is guided that we're now handing that, of
course to the executive team. We've got a new chief executive.
He's a transformation expert. He's going to drive a program
to implement these thirty five initiatives, and by the end
(02:38):
of twenty twenty five, I'm hoping that if I was
sitting here again, you'd be saying well done, Simon. The
public can see a real difference in the performance of
the organization.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Why, I sincerely hope that too, because why on earth
would you take on that job when you look at
that level of debt sixty years and I know we've
got great assets, but that doesn't make sense even to
somebody who got fifty six in school seemts no.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Well, look, you know I've had some success in my
business career, and I do. I do have a track
record of, you know, sorting out large organizations and getting
them onto a stronger footing. And when the ministers called
me early last year and said would I be prepared
to give a hand, just coincided because I wanted to
(03:21):
do something a bit more service oriented than just business thing.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
So I said yes.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
And you know, clearly the government at the time were
very focused on financial sustainability. That is important because when
you build units at an average cost of somewhere in
the vicinity of seven hundred thousand dollars, the maths is
simple if you build a thousand houses, it's going to
(03:47):
add seventy million dollars to the level of debt. It's
one hundred percent debt funded in kaing Or is not
like a normal residential property investor. Because a property investor
privately would own a home for a few years, they
would get a capital gain on it, they would earn
a full market rent. Kying Or is not like that.
(04:10):
Camera just does not get capital gains. In fact, our
houses depreciate because we own them until they're not worth anything,
and we have to pull them down, so they depreciate.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
The land.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
The land goes up exactly, but we almost always rebuild
on that land. We're not selling that so so and
then of course on the flip side, the government pay
seventy two percent of the rent. So every house we
build not only costs the taxpayer seven hundred eight hundred
thousand per unit to put in place, the taxpayer then
(04:43):
funds seventy two percent of the rent, which is the
overall proportion of the rent that is paid by government
on behalf of tenants on the income related rent subsidy.
So it's a very unattractive financial equation and therefore capping
the debt to a manageable level, which is actually more
about how we can cover the interest rate the interest
(05:05):
chargers on it. So capping at you know, twenty and
a half billion is manageable. It's still tough, and our
deficit will still take ten years to get to get
dealt with. On that twenty twenty point five billion, that's
where it will cap out as we complete this current
rate process of adding to the housing stock, and then
(05:27):
we'll go into a hold the stock level mode and
over a very long timeframe that debt could come down
all the government might decide, but they're comfortable with that
debt and ask us to add some further.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Hand as we get richer.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yeah, as within.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
The organization under control and the country's balance sheets looking
in better order.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It's really tricky because nobody wants to see kids and cars,
you know, and nobody wants to see elderly people with
no options none whatsoever, who who have the most miserable existence.
Everybody wants to be to live in a certain amount
of dignity, you know, and that's what that's what social
(06:11):
housing has been about. It's part of the New Zealand
psyche is that people have benefited from from having this
state house, but they've used it as a launch pad
in previous generations to go on and not become a
state house tenant, to own their own home. What what's changed.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
I think I think you would find if you know,
of course, the public noise almost demonizes to some extent
a Kaying or a tenant.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
You know, there's a sort of.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
A label that they're all bad, or they're all up
to crime, or you know, they're all extremely unwell or
extremely bad.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
That's not true at all.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
It's a very very very small proportion that create those
problems and that noise. The vast majority of the tenants
hugely value and there's nothing like housing to stabilize the
life of a family and need and create better prospects
for the children of that family to break out of
(07:08):
what might be a poverty trap or something and go
on to create a life for themselves. So and the
people in Kaying or are so proud of.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
The work they do. They're so good at it.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Actually on the front line, I am super impressed with
the caring and the focus and the work that goes
into supporting and ensuring that we create a good balance.
Of course, things go wrong and they always will have
one hundred and ninety thousand people living in these hopes. Unfortunately,
(07:41):
some problems are going to occur most months because they're
human beings, just just in the same way in private
rental accommodation, things are going wrong every day every month.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
As well, and so we do care.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
But we can make a great difference and a lot
of the work in the plan is to better understand
tenant needs, get much more segmented in our approach to
how we provide almost case management. As I said, we're
not social work. Our team are not social workers. We
don't have any special power. We cannot control.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
People who live in our houses.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
We don't only only by following the residential tendencies that
we have no power that is any different from a
private landlord would have. So if there's an incident in
a home, we have to.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Build a case, we have to be able to prove it.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
We then have to take it to the tendancy tribunal,
which is a sort of lightweight court process if you like,
and the tribunal has to agree with there's enough cause
for us to be able to end a tendency. That's
a lot clearer with debt issues, that's just a time
frame thing usually, but with behavior issues it's much more
(08:56):
difficult because we have to have proof, it has to
be clear and the incident has to be significant enough
for the tribunal to agree. So it's a complex process,
it's costly, it's burdensome, and sometimes we get the wrong outcome.
We do our best in the tribunal.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Sies No, we'll take a short break and we'll come
back with your questions for Simon Motor, the chair of
card Order, in just a moment, I have a question
from a listener. I heard yesterday that Simon said card
Order had requirements greater than normal residential building needs that
contributed to higher costs. Can you ask what these are
and why that's required.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah, so that's a very good question.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
And I think there are a few things that we
have to do different in a social home. And if
you think about that and purely the building form, then
we have a lot of people with disability and challenges
in so we have to design a purple we have
(09:58):
to design for accessibility and things, so a good proportion
of our homes need to be pre tailored to that's
much to do it at the build point it's very
expensive when you retrofit that to a home, so we
think about access and disability. And then the second thing
is because we are an owner for the life of
(10:19):
the home versus a typical property developer who builds themselves,
and any problems or short life span on materials chosen.
If the kitchen bench falls apart ten years down the
track in a private developers place, that's the problem for
the new owner. We're the owner and we're going to
(10:41):
be the owner all the way.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Through this hous's life.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
So we will tend to use some materials which are
more durable and have a lower what we call lifetime.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Cost to the organization.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
So if you spend a bit more, but it saves
you renewing it twice along the track and you get
fifty years out of that bench.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
And so for.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Example, we would only put stainless steel benches into our homes.
They more durable, they last a lot longer, and then
there are a few things which are just they get
a tough life some of these homes, and so we
would use, for example, solid doors because we know from
history that if we use hollow doors, we'll just be
(11:20):
replacing them at very regular intervals, So there's a little bit,
but it should be in the small tens of thousands
per unit, not a disproportionate level. And given that we
have significant buying scale and great deal of skill in
terms of sourcing, we hope the plan is to try
to offset even that little bit of extra cost by
(11:43):
leveraging our scale and still get to an equivalent market
rate for an equivalent type and size of home.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Because I was thinking when you were saying that that
that explains Chris Bishop's concern about the ten to twelve
percent more than a normal bill, doesn't it?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:59):
That or is that still too high?
Speaker 3 (12:01):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
That twelve No, it's not. It shouldn't be as high
as that. But the twelve percent is a number that
we've been able to validate over the last couple of years.
And that's further that number is a bit disproportionately high
because under the previous government's policy to rapidly grow the
amount of housing, we built nearly six thousand houses in
(12:24):
the last financial year. That is enormous, so the team
had to go extremely fast. They had to buy lots
of things quickly, so there's a bit of inefficiency creeps
in when you running at that pace, and of course
you're buying into a resource constraint market, so the suppliers
of building services would know we wouldn't have had many
(12:45):
options when we're absorbing so much, so the pricing will
have got out of wack.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
That that of course will immediate rate.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And one of the key messages in the plan is
we want to go to a consistent pipeline so we
build roughly the same number of houses every year.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
It's a disaster.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
You're going up and down that there is extremely expensive.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
But doesn't that depend on the will of your political masters?
Speaker 4 (13:10):
It certainly does. But the government have endorsed the logic here.
They are thinking about how they resolve, how they can this.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Government might and what about labor? Have you got cross
party support on that?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Look, you know, I'm not sure where they would stand
at this point, but I think any political party will
understand that when you've got a big machine like this,
you want a factory that is very efficient. So if
we're going to change that number, we should change it
at a steady rate, not say can we add two
thousand more of this year? That would be that would
(13:42):
be crazy to do that, and it would be very expensive.
So as long as we alter the level in a
reason why and so we reset the factory, if you
like to run at that level, then we'll have an
extremely efficient business.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Oh god, he's hoping. We're exactly saying that in twenty
At the end of twenty twenty five, we'll be back
with Simon Mutor in just a moment. News talk be
good to speak. We're right up against the new summon.
We've only got a couple of minutes. How are you
going to deliver all this with fewer staff like that?
You know you talked about better community tenant management. How
are you going to do that with four thousand field.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Look, actually, Kurri probably not well understood, but the staffing
level of Kaying Aura in twenty twenty was only two
thousand people and it rose to three thousand, six hundred
a little over a year ago. So we used to
be able to run this business with a much smaller
staffing level. Now that we're through that very large bill program,
(14:37):
there's a volume effect there. We don't need the number
of people to support a more moderated build program.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
And part of that growth has also.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Just been back office in efficiency, and so we've got
a transformation office set up. The new CEO who is
running kying Aura today is as a transformation expert. He
will bring a new set of disciplines that allow us
to do a better job at the frontline, to support tenants,
(15:08):
to maintain houses, to get the maintenance right to and
deliver a really great service at a much lower operating cost.
And so we'll work through that over the course of
the year. We've already got in the plan here. We've
reduced the deficit or the losses of the organization by
several hundred million with the actions already planned.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Wow, and these.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Further actions will further strengthen and and get so we
get a highly disciplined organization that does a much narrower
range of things, does them much better at a lower
overall cost.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
That's that's where it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Just sounds magical, like it sounds Unicorn country.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
But I'm pretty good at this stuff. Yeah, this is
what I do, and I've been around a few businesses
done that, and so I'm confident. If you know we're
having this interview at this time next year, we'll be
able to put a few facts on the table and
you'll be impressed.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Well, yeah, how will I know that you'll have been
able to do that, because that's the one thing that
ground my gears with the last government was that i'd
how do you know it's working?
Speaker 3 (16:18):
There was no answer.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
We'll publish, will publish regularly the results against a range
of KPIs And just to give you some confidence, we
now have less than three thousand stuff, so we've already
come down to under three thousand from the three thousand,
six hundred and fifty. So the initiative's already implemented and
the performance on almost every measure has improved. So that's
(16:41):
what we expect to see play out over the coming year.
We'll be publishing our results quarterly through the Minister and
we always publish as those on our website and you'll
see the performance measures and I'm confident you'll see them
improving steadily.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Because that's the other thing too. It was the complete
and uttered disregard of tax payer money that people getting
up at four o'clock in the morning to go milking,
to you know, getting up and work looking on roofs
in the rain, and the tax money goes out Nobody
minds when it's when it's husbanded carefully and respectfully, but
the waste completely.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
And I'm a material taxpayer, as you might guess, and
I really care that we do a great job for
the taxpayer, but we don't do that at the expense
of a great job for the families who really need
the support. We get that frontline service right, and we
deliver extremely well with every dollar really counting.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Well, that's a great place to end it, and I
really look forward to talking to you again about this,
maybe on an update halfway through. Thank you for your time,
I really do appreciate it. We'll leave you the weekend
will take you up to the news For.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
More from carry Wood and Mornings. Listen live to news
talks that be from nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Kerrywood and Morning's podcast from News Talks.
He'd be.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
As promised. Simon moved to the Caying Order board chairs
in studio for the next half hour. The government's shaking
up social housing, as you well know, yesterday announced a
plan to get caying order back on track. High priced
or high value caying Order homes will be sold off
in an effort to bring down its books. The new
cost saving plan includes the sale of around nine hundred homes,
(00:34):
with the money to go to more low cost, denser
places with greater demand. Simon Motor joins me now and
I'm just going to here we go.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Very good morning to you, Good morning to you.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Carry So what can the board do? What can the
board actually do to affect operations on the ground.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Look, the board is the governing body of the organization
and is kying or is really an agent of government
and its job is to build and manage social housing
as allocated to it by the Ministry of Housing. And
so that's the job we do in it. At the
board level, we shape the overall strategy. What are the
(01:16):
right areas of focus, Where should we allocate resources, where's
the greatest ways we can make a difference how do
we get good value for the taxpayer in the choices
we make, the policies around the type of facilities and buildings.
We create the model of how we support tenants because
we're not social workers where tenancy managers. But I think
(01:40):
often the public might have a view that where social workers,
we're not. That's the role of Ministry of Social Development.
So the board creates a framework and what we've done
here with this new plan is re architect a narrower
focus for the organization. All big organizations are better when
they're focus is now. They perform much better. When you
(02:02):
fragment focus, you get poor performance. Is a narrower focus.
There are thirty five initiatives outline in the Planet's available
on our website. It was published yesterday and i'd welcome
people to.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Have a look.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
You can see the level of detail that's gone into
here's the things that we're going to do better and
it's some of the changes we're going to make. So
the board is guided that we're now handing that, of
course to the executive team. We've got a new chief executive.
He's a transformation expert. He's going to drive a program
to implement these thirty five initiatives, and by the end
(02:38):
of twenty twenty five, I'm hoping that if I was
sitting here again, you'd be saying well done, Simon. The
public can see a real difference in the performance of
the organization.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Why, I sincerely hope that too, because why on earth
would you take on that job when you look at
that level of debt sixty years and I know we've
got great assets, but that doesn't make sense even to
somebody who got fifty six in school seemts no.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Well, look, you know I've had some success in my
business career, and I do. I do have a track
record of, you know, sorting out large organizations and getting
them onto a stronger footing. And when the ministers called
me early last year and said would I be prepared
to give a hand, just coincided because I wanted to
(03:21):
do something a bit more service oriented than just business thing.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
So I said yes.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
And you know, clearly the government at the time were
very focused on financial sustainability. That is important because when
you build units at an average cost of somewhere in
the vicinity of seven hundred thousand dollars, the maths is
simple if you build a thousand houses, it's going to
(03:47):
add seventy million dollars to the level of debt. It's
one hundred percent debt funded in kaing Or is not
like a normal residential property investor. Because a property investor
privately would own a home for a few years, they
would get a capital gain on it, they would earn
a full market rent. Kying Or is not like that.
(04:10):
Camera just does not get capital gains. In fact, our
houses depreciate because we own them until they're not worth anything,
and we have to pull them down, so they depreciate.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
The land.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
The land goes up exactly, but we almost always rebuild
on that land. We're not selling that so so and
then of course on the flip side, the government pay
seventy two percent of the rent. So every house we
build not only costs the taxpayer seven hundred eight hundred
thousand per unit to put in place, the taxpayer then
(04:43):
funds seventy two percent of the rent, which is the
overall proportion of the rent that is paid by government
on behalf of tenants on the income related rent subsidy.
So it's a very unattractive financial equation and therefore capping
the debt to a manageable level, which is actually more
about how we can cover the interest rate the interest
(05:05):
chargers on it. So capping at you know, twenty and
a half billion is manageable. It's still tough, and our
deficit will still take ten years to get to get
dealt with. On that twenty twenty point five billion, that's
where it will cap out as we complete this current
rate process of adding to the housing stock, and then
(05:27):
we'll go into a hold the stock level mode and
over a very long timeframe that debt could come down
all the government might decide, but they're comfortable with that
debt and ask us to add some further.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Hand as we get richer.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yeah, as within.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
The organization under control and the country's balance sheets looking
in better order.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It's really tricky because nobody wants to see kids and cars,
you know, and nobody wants to see elderly people with
no options none whatsoever, who who have the most miserable existence.
Everybody wants to be to live in a certain amount
of dignity, you know, and that's what that's what social
(06:11):
housing has been about. It's part of the New Zealand
psyche is that people have benefited from from having this
state house, but they've used it as a launch pad
in previous generations to go on and not become a
state house tenant, to own their own home. What what's changed.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
I think I think you would find if you know,
of course, the public noise almost demonizes to some extent
a Kaying or a tenant.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
You know, there's a sort of.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
A label that they're all bad, or they're all up
to crime, or you know, they're all extremely unwell or
extremely bad.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
That's not true at all.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
It's a very very very small proportion that create those
problems and that noise. The vast majority of the tenants
hugely value and there's nothing like housing to stabilize the
life of a family and need and create better prospects
for the children of that family to break out of
(07:08):
what might be a poverty trap or something and go
on to create a life for themselves. So and the
people in Kaying or are so proud of.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
The work they do. They're so good at it.
Speaker 4 (07:20):
Actually on the front line, I am super impressed with
the caring and the focus and the work that goes
into supporting and ensuring that we create a good balance.
Of course, things go wrong and they always will have
one hundred and ninety thousand people living in these hopes. Unfortunately,
(07:41):
some problems are going to occur most months because they're
human beings, just just in the same way in private
rental accommodation, things are going wrong every day every month.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
As well, and so we do care.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
But we can make a great difference and a lot
of the work in the plan is to better understand
tenant needs, get much more segmented in our approach to
how we provide almost case management. As I said, we're
not social work. Our team are not social workers. We
don't have any special power. We cannot control.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
People who live in our houses.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
We don't only only by following the residential tendencies that
we have no power that is any different from a
private landlord would have. So if there's an incident in
a home, we have to.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Build a case, we have to be able to prove it.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
We then have to take it to the tendancy tribunal,
which is a sort of lightweight court process if you like,
and the tribunal has to agree with there's enough cause
for us to be able to end a tendency. That's
a lot clearer with debt issues, that's just a time
frame thing usually, but with behavior issues it's much more
(08:56):
difficult because we have to have proof, it has to
be clear and the incident has to be significant enough
for the tribunal to agree. So it's a complex process,
it's costly, it's burdensome, and sometimes we get the wrong outcome.
We do our best in the tribunal.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Sies No, we'll take a short break and we'll come
back with your questions for Simon Motor, the chair of
card Order, in just a moment, I have a question
from a listener. I heard yesterday that Simon said card
Order had requirements greater than normal residential building needs that
contributed to higher costs. Can you ask what these are
and why that's required.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah, so that's a very good question.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
And I think there are a few things that we
have to do different in a social home. And if
you think about that and purely the building form, then
we have a lot of people with disability and challenges
in so we have to design a purple we have
(09:58):
to design for accessibility and things, so a good proportion
of our homes need to be pre tailored to that's
much to do it at the build point it's very
expensive when you retrofit that to a home, so we
think about access and disability. And then the second thing
is because we are an owner for the life of
(10:19):
the home versus a typical property developer who builds themselves,
and any problems or short life span on materials chosen.
If the kitchen bench falls apart ten years down the
track in a private developers place, that's the problem for
the new owner. We're the owner and we're going to
(10:41):
be the owner all the way.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Through this hous's life.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
So we will tend to use some materials which are
more durable and have a lower what we call lifetime.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Cost to the organization.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
So if you spend a bit more, but it saves
you renewing it twice along the track and you get
fifty years out of that bench.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
And so for.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Example, we would only put stainless steel benches into our homes.
They more durable, they last a lot longer, and then
there are a few things which are just they get
a tough life some of these homes, and so we
would use, for example, solid doors because we know from
history that if we use hollow doors, we'll just be
(11:20):
replacing them at very regular intervals, So there's a little bit,
but it should be in the small tens of thousands
per unit, not a disproportionate level. And given that we
have significant buying scale and great deal of skill in
terms of sourcing, we hope the plan is to try
to offset even that little bit of extra cost by
(11:43):
leveraging our scale and still get to an equivalent market
rate for an equivalent type and size of home.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Because I was thinking when you were saying that that
that explains Chris Bishop's concern about the ten to twelve
percent more than a normal bill, doesn't it?
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:59):
That or is that still too high?
Speaker 3 (12:01):
No?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
That twelve No, it's not. It shouldn't be as high
as that. But the twelve percent is a number that
we've been able to validate over the last couple of years.
And that's further that number is a bit disproportionately high
because under the previous government's policy to rapidly grow the
amount of housing, we built nearly six thousand houses in
(12:24):
the last financial year. That is enormous, so the team
had to go extremely fast. They had to buy lots
of things quickly, so there's a bit of inefficiency creeps
in when you running at that pace, and of course
you're buying into a resource constraint market, so the suppliers
of building services would know we wouldn't have had many
(12:45):
options when we're absorbing so much, so the pricing will
have got out of wack.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
That that of course will immediate rate.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
And one of the key messages in the plan is
we want to go to a consistent pipeline so we
build roughly the same number of houses every year.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
It's a disaster.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
You're going up and down that there is extremely expensive.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
But doesn't that depend on the will of your political masters?
Speaker 4 (13:10):
It certainly does. But the government have endorsed the logic here.
They are thinking about how they resolve, how they can this.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Government might and what about labor? Have you got cross
party support on that?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (13:22):
Look, you know, I'm not sure where they would stand
at this point, but I think any political party will
understand that when you've got a big machine like this,
you want a factory that is very efficient. So if
we're going to change that number, we should change it
at a steady rate, not say can we add two
thousand more of this year? That would be that would
(13:42):
be crazy to do that, and it would be very expensive.
So as long as we alter the level in a
reason why and so we reset the factory, if you
like to run at that level, then we'll have an
extremely efficient business.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Oh god, he's hoping. We're exactly saying that in twenty
At the end of twenty twenty five, we'll be back
with Simon Mutor in just a moment. News talk be
good to speak. We're right up against the new summon.
We've only got a couple of minutes. How are you
going to deliver all this with fewer staff like that?
You know you talked about better community tenant management. How
are you going to do that with four thousand field.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Look, actually, Kurri probably not well understood, but the staffing
level of Kaying Aura in twenty twenty was only two
thousand people and it rose to three thousand, six hundred
a little over a year ago. So we used to
be able to run this business with a much smaller
staffing level. Now that we're through that very large bill program,
(14:37):
there's a volume effect there. We don't need the number
of people to support a more moderated build program.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
And part of that growth has also.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Just been back office in efficiency, and so we've got
a transformation office set up. The new CEO who is
running kying Aura today is as a transformation expert. He
will bring a new set of disciplines that allow us
to do a better job at the frontline, to support tenants,
(15:08):
to maintain houses, to get the maintenance right to and
deliver a really great service at a much lower operating cost.
And so we'll work through that over the course of
the year. We've already got in the plan here. We've
reduced the deficit or the losses of the organization by
several hundred million with the actions already planned.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Wow, and these.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Further actions will further strengthen and and get so we
get a highly disciplined organization that does a much narrower
range of things, does them much better at a lower
overall cost.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
That's that's where it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Just sounds magical, like it sounds Unicorn country.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
But I'm pretty good at this stuff. Yeah, this is
what I do, and I've been around a few businesses
done that, and so I'm confident. If you know we're
having this interview at this time next year, we'll be
able to put a few facts on the table and
you'll be impressed.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Well, yeah, how will I know that you'll have been
able to do that, because that's the one thing that
ground my gears with the last government was that i'd
how do you know it's working?
Speaker 3 (16:18):
There was no answer.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
We'll publish, will publish regularly the results against a range
of KPIs And just to give you some confidence, we
now have less than three thousand stuff, so we've already
come down to under three thousand from the three thousand,
six hundred and fifty. So the initiative's already implemented and
the performance on almost every measure has improved. So that's
(16:41):
what we expect to see play out over the coming year.
We'll be publishing our results quarterly through the Minister and
we always publish as those on our website and you'll
see the performance measures and I'm confident you'll see them
improving steadily.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Because that's the other thing too. It was the complete
and uttered disregard of tax payer money that people getting
up at four o'clock in the morning to go milking,
to you know, getting up and work looking on roofs
in the rain, and the tax money goes out Nobody
minds when it's when it's husbanded carefully and respectfully, but
the waste completely.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
And I'm a material taxpayer, as you might guess, and
I really care that we do a great job for
the taxpayer, but we don't do that at the expense
of a great job for the families who really need
the support. We get that frontline service right, and we
deliver extremely well with every dollar really counting.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Well, that's a great place to end it, and I
really look forward to talking to you again about this,
maybe on an update halfway through. Thank you for your time,
I really do appreciate it. We'll leave you the weekend
will take you up to the news For.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
More from carry Wood and Mornings. Listen live to news
talks that be from nine am weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.