Dreaming of a Home in the Territory

In the Northern Territory, the dream of a home is slipping through the fingers of young families and Indigenous communities like sand in the desert. Darwin’s median house price soared to $620,000 in 2024, while Alice Springs trails at $580,000, both far beyond the reach of a young couple earning the NT median household income of $95,000. In remote areas, 40% of Indigenous households face overcrowding, with up to 15 people crammed into three-bedroom homes. The housing crunch isn’t just a statistic, it’s a crisis of dignity, stability, and hope. With the 2025 federal election on the horizon, political parties are tossing out plans to fix it, but their ideas must be judged against logic, history, and the Territory’s stark realities. In the Northern Territory, dreams of homeownership are being priced out of existence. For young families, owning a home is no longer a milestone, it’s a myth. For Indigenous communities, it’s even worse. They’re not just locked out of homeownership, they’re locked into overcrowded, neglected, and politically weaponised housing schemes (scams). Yet, the politicians in Canberra continue to speak as if policy tweaks will somehow reverse decades of failure.

Every party claim to offer a fix. But the truth is, most of them are fixing symptoms, not causes. And some are even fixing what wasn’t broken in the first place.

The federal Coalition's headline policy, allowing Australians to dip into their superannuation to buy their first home, sounds appealing. It gives young families access to their own money to secure a roof over their heads. But the real question is, does this solve the supply problem or just increase demand in an already strangled market?

Access to super for deposits might help in Sydney’s fringe suburbs, but in Darwin, where the land is available, but the bureaucracy is bloated, it’s like giving someone a car but building no roads. The CLP echoes these ideas at the local level, promoting deregulation and private development. They speak of unleashing supply, but progress remains clogged in planning red tape, native title complexities, and a system that punishes small builders while rewarding large, politically connected developers. Oh, wait lets not go off on a tangent about the waterfront Precinct, one of many examples of corruption prevalent in the top end.

The Coalition’s intentions may be supply-drive. But without systemic reform of the barriers to building, unleashing super may inflate prices further, especially in markets with too few homes to begin with.

Labor sees the housing crisis through a redistributive lens. More taxpayer-funded social housing, more rental assistance, more bureaucracy. For remote Indigenous communities, that means more promises, more “community consultations,” and more dwellings that crumble faster than the press releases celebrating them. Federal and Territory Labor are  emphasising social equity with a $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund to build 20,000 affordable homes nationally, including 2,000 for the NT, and a shared equity scheme for first buyers. They also promise rent assistance hikes, $100 fortnightly, for low-income families. History shows that public housing tends to concentrate poverty and dysfunction. Labor’s focus on Indigenous housing is laudable, overcrowding contributes to health disparities, with 20% higher rates of respiratory illness in affected communities, or could that be due to the imposed drug experiment (we will never know? Sic) Yet their past efforts disappoint, a 2023 fund promised 4,000 NT homes but built few bogged down by $400,000-per-house costs in remote areas. Rent assistance has proven effective, cutting evictions by 15% in 2020, but it’s a stopgap, not a solution, for the NT’s supply woes, and it cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions. Labor’s heart might be in the right place, but their execution stumbles.Rather than empowering Indigenous communities to own, manage, or develop their housing stock, Labor policies tend to treat them as passive recipients of endless programs. The assumption is clear, you’re too vulnerable to build, too disadvantaged to own, and too fragile to fail. That philosophy may be dressed up in compassion, but it strips away dignity and individual agency.

The Greens believe the problem is capitalism itself. Their answer? Nationalise more housing, tax vacant properties, freeze rents, and outlaw "greedy" developers. This may play well on social media, but it doesn't build a single brick in Tennant Creek. The Greens, driven by a vision of systemic change, propose building 50,000 public homes nationwide (5,000 for the NT), freezing rents for two years, and taxing vacant properties to increase supply. They aim to house young families in Darwin and alleviate overcrowding in Indigenous communities, where 60% of residents lack adequate shelter. A 2010 NT remote housing program built less than 1,000 homes, reducing overcrowding by 20%, showing public housing can work. But rent freezes, like Victoria’s 2020 experiment, backfire, landlords withdrew properties, shrinking rental stock by over 8%. In communities already suffering from scarcity and isolation, introducing more government control doesn’t create homes, it creates stagnation. The Greens oppose most private development, dismiss ownership as a bourgeois pursuit, and treat housing as a moral right rather than an economic good that must be produced, maintained, and paid for.

Their utopianism, while rhetorically appealing, has repeatedly failed where tested. Rent freezes destroy supply. Punitive property taxes drive investors out. And when no one wants to build, no one can move in.

Phil Scott, the NT’s teal candidate, offers a technocratic middle ground. He champions “sustainable housing,” ESG-aligned investments, and “community-driven planning.” It’s the language of consultants, not carpenters. Scott proposes well-intentioned initiatives that require committees, frameworks, and grants, but little actual building. He proposes federal grants for Indigenous-led housing projects and streamlined approvals for modular homes, which are claimed to be 30% cheaper than traditional builds. Although evidence suggests they may not be fit for purpose.  He also pushes freight taxpayer funded subsidies to cut material costs, a proven idea from a 2019 Tennant Creek pilot that built 50 homes efficiently. Scott’s plan resonates with Indigenous communities, where local control over housing has long been a demand. What he fails to grasp is that communities don’t need more discussion circles, they need walls, roofs, and keys. The managerial class he represents excels at diagnosing problems from afar but lacks the courage to confront the activist ideology and regulatory sclerosis that strangle housing development in the NT.

One Nation opts for a sledgehammer, cap immigration to reduce demand and redirect $5 billion from foreign aid to NT housing. They point to Darwin’s 5% population growth in 2024 as a driver of the crunch. While their critics often dismiss them as crude, their emphasis on sovereignty, over land, over community planning, and over national infrastructure, speaks to what many feel, that Canberra treats the NT as a testing ground for failed policies imported from suburban elites.

Their policies lack polish, but they offer something the others don’t. They offer a belief that communities should be in charge of their own futures, not trapped in perpetual dependency under the watchful eye of bureaucrats and consultants. This is dangerous rhetoric from a federal candidate, if they keep it up, they may end up being jailed for hate speech.

The NT housing crunch is a human tragedy. Young families in Darwin face rents consuming 40% of their income, while Indigenous communities endure conditions that erode health and hope. Data shows 37% of Territorians rank housing as their top concern, up 5% since 2022. Past policies, super withdrawals, rent caps, or housing funds, have nibbled at the problem but never solved it. The NT needs:

• Land release without political gamesmanship

• Planning reform that removes ideological interference

• Ownership incentives that encourage responsibility, not reward dysfunction

• Real partnerships with private developers willing to build where it’s hard, not just profitable
  

Until politicians stop treating housing as a platform for ideology or pity, the dream of owning a home in the Territory will remain just that, a dream. From the author.

The opinions and statements are those of Sam Wilks and do not necessarily represent whom Sam Consults or contracts to. Sam Wilks is a skilled and experienced Security and Risk Consultant with 3 decades of expertise in the fields of Real estate, Security, and the hospitality/gaming industry. Sam has trained over 1,000 entry level security personnel, taught defensive tactics, weapons training and handcuffs to policing personnel and the public. His knowledge and practical experience have made him a valuable asset to many organisations looking to enhance their security measures and provide a safe and secure environment for their clients and staff.