The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia and Industry Super Australia have welcomed the passage of the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) legislation, with the support of the Greens and crossbench senators and members.
ASFA said the passage of the legislation through the Parliament was an important step towards increasing the supply of much needed social and affordable housing.
“ASFA notes the Government will introduce several measures to increase the supply of social and affordable housing across the country, including increasing the Government-guaranteed liability cap of housing bonds,” the association said in a media release.
ISA said the legislation will support a pipeline of 40,000 social and affordable dwellings over the next five years.
“Coupled with reforms to planning and access to well-located land, super funds are now much better placed to deploy capital in new social and affordable housing supply while meeting the best financial interests of super fund members,” ISA said.
The amendments agreed to, and extra investment secured through negotiations, improve investability for super funds, through guaranteeing recurrent expenditure and ensuring indexation of HAFF distributions available to support long term investment in new social and affordable dwellings, according to ISA.
“These changes have been critical to ensuring finance from institutional investors can be structured on terms that are executable and satisfy the best financial interests of members,” the association said.