A house is built in a remote Northern Territory community

2,700 houses over ten years requires about 270 a year. The 300th was completed in 2026, and as at August the two governments were reported deadlocked, targets reduced, reporting missing and funding not flowing.

housingOne dwelling under the $4 billion Commonwealth-Northern Territory remote housing agreement draft compare across jurisdictions

1245 days elapsed
longest dependent chain

9 discrete steps
across 2 bodies

0% waiting on availability
scheduling or queue, not assessment

0 days saved by concurrency
vs. 1245 if run end-to-end

Where the time goes

Critical-path days only. Steps that run alongside others are real work but do not lengthen the process, so counting them here would overstate the prize.

applicant	450d	Waiting on the applicant to supply or fix something.
assessment	405d	Someone is genuinely evaluating the merits.
third party	390d	Waiting on an external body outside the regulator's control.

The process, step by step

Applies when: A house is to be built in a remote community or homeland under the remote housing package.

#	Step	Who	Why it waits	Clock	Typical	Basis
1	Community need identified and prioritised assessment Which communities and homelands receive dwellings, and in what order.	—	assessment	—	180 reported	—
2	Obtain a lease over the land decision Consultation with traditional owners and their informed consent, through the land council, to a lease for housing. after Community need identified and prioritised 795d slack	Land council	third party	—	270 estimate	Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth)
3	Design for climate and for how people live application Culturally appropriate design suited to the Northern Territory climate. after Obtain a lease over the land 645d slack	—	applicant	—	150 estimate	—
4	Procure a builder, with local employment obligations application after Design for climate and for how people live 465d slack	Aboriginal community-controlled housing sector	assessment	—	180 estimate	—
5	Mobilise to site application Materials, crew and plant to a remote community, around the wet season. after Procure a builder, with local employment obligations 345d slack	—	third party	—	120 estimate	—
6	Construction application after Mobilise to site 45d slack	—	applicant	—	300 estimate	—
7	Tenancy allocation and handover registration after Construction	Aboriginal community-controlled housing sector	assessment	—	45 estimate	—
8	Ongoing maintenance and repairs assessment only if triggered The service that determines how long the house lasts. Triggered when: The house is occupied and requires repair, which it will. after Tenancy allocation and handover	Aboriginal community-controlled housing sector	third party	—	3650 estimate	—
9	Program delivered at the required rate decision only if triggered 2,700 houses over ten years requires about 270 a year. Triggered when: Always. Marked optional so that a program-level observation does not distort the critical path of a single dwelling. after Community need identified and prioritised	—	scheduling	—	3650 reported	—

on the critical path scheduling/queue = delay not caused by the assessment itself

Proposed changes

Publish the rate a program has to run at, next to the number it has reached digitise
2,700 houses over ten years is about 270 a year. The 300th was completed in 2026. As at August 2026 the governments were reported deadlocked, targets reduced, reporting missing and funding not flowing — and the required rate has never been published alongside the cumulative total.
The lease is a right being exercised, so the question is whether it is resourced threshold
Building on Aboriginal land requires consultation with traditional owners and their informed consent. That takes time, and this database's usual method — find the long step, ask if it can be shorter — produces the wrong answer here.

Sources

Prime Minister of Australia and NIAA: $4 billion over ten years, Commonwealth and Northern Territory, to deliver up to 2,700 houses and approximately halve overcrowding in remote Northern Territory communities and homelands
Ministers' media centre: 300 new homes built in First Nations remote communities in the Northern Territory, with the 300th completed at Peppimenarti
ABC News, 13 August 2026: governments deadlocked on the NT remote housing agreement, with building behind schedule, construction targets being reduced, reporting missing and funding not flowing
Closing the Gap Target 9a: 88 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in appropriately sized housing by 2031; 81.4 per cent nationally in 2021, up from 78.9 per cent in 2016, against 93.5 per cent for other Australians
56.6 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Northern Territory live in overcrowded housing, rising to 74.5 per cent in very remote areas
Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth)

Something wrong here?

This page is wrong in some way -- every page like it is. If you have run this process, the most useful thing you can do is tell us which step took longer than we say and why. Edit data/processes/nt-remote-housing.toml and open a pull request, or send us the correction.