Publish the rate a program has to run at, next to the number it has reached
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.
Steps this would change
Rationale
This database has now found the same shape three times, and this is the clearest instance.
| Program | Target | Reached |
|---|---|---|
| Housing Australia Future Fund | 40,000 homes by 2029 | 1,432 as at May 2026 |
| Murray-Darling water recovery | 450 GL by Dec 2027 | about half as at March 2026 |
| Remote NT housing | 2,700 houses over ten years | 300th completed in 2026 |
In each case a cumulative total is published and the rate required to arrive on time is not. 2,700 houses over ten years is about 270 a year. That number does not appear beside the 300.
Reporting a stock against a target invites two useless arguments. Critics say the program has failed; defenders say it is early and delivery ramps. Both are unfalsifiable against a cumulative number, and this project has already made that point about Free TAFE completions. A published run rate ends both arguments: either the program is at the rate it needs or it is not.
Here the case is sharper because the reporting itself is reported missing. As at 13 August 2026 the Commonwealth and Northern Territory were reported deadlocked on the agreement, with building behind schedule, construction targets being reduced, reporting missing and funding not flowing. An agreement signed by two governments, all four land councils and Aboriginal Housing NT is not delivering, and the parties least able to do anything about it are the ones living in the housing.
That context matters: 56.6 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Northern Territory live in overcrowded housing, and 74.5 per cent in very remote areas. Closing the Gap Target 9a seeks 88 per cent in appropriately sized housing by 2031, against 81.4 per cent nationally in 2021.
The proposal. Publish, quarterly: houses completed, houses under construction, houses commenced, against the rate required to reach 2,700 by the agreement's end — plus expenditure against profile, and where a target has been revised, the revision and its reason.
Who acts: the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory, as parties to an agreement that already contains reporting obligations.
What is being traded away
A published run rate will be used to argue for abandoning the program, not for resourcing it. A number showing delivery at a fraction of the required rate is a gift to anyone who wants to argue that remote housing investment does not work, and the people who would bear the consequence of that argument are the ones in overcrowded houses. This project publishes uncomfortable numbers as a matter of method; it should be honest that here the risk of misuse is high and the constituency to resist it is small.
Rate reporting can drive the wrong build. A program measured on houses per year has an incentive toward the cheapest, fastest, most accessible dwellings — larger communities over homelands, standard designs over climate and culturally appropriate ones, and fly-in contractors over the community-controlled sector whose capacity the agreement is meant to build. Every one of those trades quality and long-term maintenance for a number.
Some of the delay is legitimate and should not be counted against the rate. Lease negotiation is a land right being exercised, and wet season closures are weather. A run-rate metric that treats those as underperformance would put pressure on exactly the steps that must not be compressed.
And this is the sixth zero-day transparency proposal on this site. The pattern is now conspicuous, and it means something: across thirty-three Commonwealth objectives, the most common thing this project can identify is a number that is not published. That is a finding about the state of Australian public administration data, and it is also a limit on what a database like this one can contribute.
Precedent
Infrastructure and capital programs routinely publish delivery schedules against forecast. The Closing the Gap dashboard already publishes trajectory lines against targets, showing where a measure needs to be to arrive on time.
Sources
- Prime Minister of Australia and NIAA: $4 billion over ten years to deliver up to 2,700 houses in remote Northern Territory communities and homelands
- Ministers' media centre: 300th home completed at Peppimenarti
- ABC News, 13 August 2026: governments deadlocked, building behind schedule, construction targets being reduced, reporting missing and funding not flowing
- Closing the Gap Target 9a and Productivity Commission dashboard data: 81.4 per cent nationally in 2021 against a 2031 target of 88 per cent; 56.6 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the NT in overcrowded housing, 74.5 per cent in very remote areas