The Program

Start your day by collecting your registration materials and enjoying tea and coffee in the Trade Show Area. Take the opportunity to connect with fellow delegates and meet our valued sponsors and exhibitors.

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Conference opening by Australian Community Housing CEO Mark Degotardi

Speakers:
- Mark Degotardi, CEO Australian Community Housing

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Speakers:
- Minister Claire O'Neil

Home is more than a roof over your head. It provides the foundation for stability, opportunity, connection and a sense of belonging. In this special plenary, tenants share their experiences in their own words, exploring what having a safe, secure and affordable home has made possible in their lives.

Speaker:
- Argyle Housing Tenants

What might housing market look like in 2050? This session looks at the forces shaping the future of housing, from demographic and economic change to employment and the broader housing market, and what they could mean for the sector.

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Join us in the Trade Show Area for morning tea and networking. Connect with industry peers while exploring exhibitor displays and engaging with our sponsors.

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Community housing delivers value well beyond the homes we provide, but as a sector, we haven't always been able to tell that story consistently. This session explores new work to identify what we already measure, where the common ground lies, and how we can build a shared approach to demonstrating the social, economic and community impact of our sector.

Speakers:
- Christian (Andi) Nygaard, Professor of Housing Economics, UNSW City Futures Research Centre

What role can external capital play in expanding community housing supply? This session explores where external investment can work, the conditions needed to make it viable, and what investors and financiers are seeing in the market.

Speakers:
- Tony Stoilkovski, Client Director | Government, Education and Community, National Australia Bank
- Simon Hunter, Head of Australia & New Zealand, Invesis

A secure home is fundamental, but having a home does not always mean feeling connected. This session explores the growing challenge of loneliness and belonging, and what it means for community housing providers. What can we learn about human connection that could change how we think about housing, neighbourhoods and community and how can providers deliberately create the conditions for people to feel connected and belong?

Speakers:
- Debi Marriott-Lavery, CEO SGCH
- Michelle Lim, CEO, Ending Loneliness

A good housing system should lift people up, giving them stability and room to build the life they want. This session explores how person-centred approaches can connect the different parts of the homelessness to housing continuum, and where the system may instead leave people stuck or push them further down.

Speakers:
- Jamie Hutchinson, National Manager Community Development Strategy
- Christian-Paul Stenta , Head of Impact, Policy & Government Relations, Launch Housing

Enjoy lunch in the Trade Show Area while networking with delegates, visiting exhibitors, and learning more about the products and services showcased by our sponsors.

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How do we make sustainability practical in the development and delivery of community housing? This session explores the choices being made across the development lifecycle and how the sector can balance environmental performance with cost, buildability, tenant outcomes and long-term asset performance.

Speakers:
- Alison Scotland, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC)
- Jamie Shaw, Group Sustainability Director, Karndean Designflooring. UK
- Lindsey Gray, Development Director, Bridge Housing

A home can be discounted from market rent and still be out of reach for the people it is meant to serve. This session will explore what a national definition of affordable housing should mean in practice, and how rent and eligibility settings can deliver lasting affordability while enabling community housing providers to build at scale.

Speakers:
- Chris Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Foundation Housing
- Carolyn Viney , Chief Executive Officer, Assemble

Regional communities face persistent rental shortages, with smaller and thinner markets often facing greater need than metropolitan areas. This session takes a look at how the community housing sector can help unlock supply in the places it is most needed, exploring key market challenges and the direction policy needs to take.

Speakers:
- Lyndal Robertshaw, Group Chief Executive Officer, Home in Place
- Kerry Pearse, CEO, Homes for Locals

A practical look at how our sector is facing the challenges and finding the opportunities under current conditions across a diversity of regions. This session explores three very different regional settings and how community housing providers are innovating and forming key partnerships to respond to the local need.

Speakers:
- Greg Hoffman, Executive Officer, Queensland Alliance of Councils
- Wesley Chapman, CEO, Cornerstone Housing
- Kristie Looney, Executive Director Housing & Property, Uniting Vic.Tas

Take a break and enjoy afternoon tea in the Trade Show Area. Continue conversations with colleagues, make new connections and spend time with our sponsors and exhibitors.

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Social and affordable housing requirements are often framed as a drag on housing productivity - adding cost, complexity and delay. But could a long-term pipeline do precisely the opposite: create certainty and scale, unlock Modern Methods of Construction and investment, and build the capability needed to deliver more homes more efficiently? And if secure housing enables people to work, learn, care and participate, isn't ensuring more Australians have a stable home itself a core driver of national productivity?

Speakers:
- Dr Alison Roberts, Commissioner, Productivity Commission

What if each round of public investment strengthened our capacity to deliver the next? Bringing European experts together with Australian housing leaders, this session explores how public land, affordable finance and provider regulation can protect affordability, build equity and support continual reinvestment in new homes. What could Australia adapt, and what would it take to build a permanently affordable housing system at scale?

Speakers:
- Dr Julie Lawson, Adjunct Professor, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University
- Mike Richard-Allen, Chairperson, Link Wentworth
- Dr Gerald Köss, Researcher, Austrian Federation of Limited Profit Housing Associations (Austria)
- Adam Czerniak, Associate Professor, SGH Warsaw School of Economics (Poland)

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Speakers:
- Mark Degotardi, CEO Australian Community Housing

The Australian Community Housing National Awards are the sector's most prestigious annual celebration, recognising outstanding achievement across community housing.

The Awards honour individuals, teams, programs, developments and partnerships that demonstrate leadership, innovation and impact. Setting new benchmarks and contributing to stronger outcomes for tenants and communities across Australia.

Start your day by enjoying tea and coffee in the Trade Show Area. Take the opportunity to connect with fellow delegates and meet our valued sponsors and exhibitors.

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Join Kos Samaras, Australia’s most influential pollster, as he unpacks the groundbreaking Australian Resilience Index - the first of its kind to map financial, health and social resilience across Australia’s neighbourhoods. Revealing stark divides in people’s ability to weather a crisis, the findings challenge familiar assumptions about who is struggling and why. What does this new picture of Australia mean for housing policy and investment? And how should the community housing sector and our political leaders respond?

Speaker:
- Kos Samaras

Australia cannot meet its housing ambitions by building at today's pace and price. What genuinely drives up costs and delays, and which rules protect quality? This session brings development, policy and building regulation into a frank conversation about what needs to change to deliver more social and affordable homes.

Speakers:
- Sam Gribble, General Manager , EveryOne, a division of Metricon
- Charlie Daoud, Director, Traders in Purple

Join us in the Trade Show Area for morning tea and networking. Connect with industry peers while exploring exhibitor displays and engaging with our sponsors.

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Meaningful engagement with First Nations tenants requires culturally safe and respectful approaches. This session explores best practice in tenant voice and culturally appropriate engagement to deliver better outcomes.

Speaker: Russell Logan, Chief Executive Officer Coodjingburra H.O.M.E

Media scrutiny, transparent regulation and public reporting can reveal uncomfortable truths. How we respond is a test of our commitment to tenants and accountability. This session explores how providers can handle difficult coverage and findings openly, turn scrutiny into meaningful change, and strengthen public trust.

Speakers:
- Jan Berriman, CEO, HousingFirst
- Victoria McCaskill, Head of Brand & Marketing, SGCH

What does good operational performance look like, and what are community housing providers preparing for next? This session explores how organisations of all sizes can build the capability, systems and resilience needed to deliver quality services, manage assets and remain compliant in a sector that is continually evolving.

Speakers:
- Alicia Follent
- Vicky Meyer, Chief Operations Officer & Deputy CEO

How can community housing providers move beyond individual experimentation to build workforce-wide AI capability? This session explores how leaders can develop a clear AI strategy, establish practical policies and guardrails, build staff confidence and deliver training that supports effective, responsible use of AI. It will also consider how AI capability fits within broader workforce development, alongside the human skills essential to the sector’s future.

Speaker: Kate vanderVoort, Founder & CEO, AI Success Lab

Enjoy lunch in the Trade Show Area while networking with delegates, visiting exhibitors, and learning more about the products and services showcased by our sponsors.

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Housing has become one of Australia's defining political and cultural divides. It shapes who can build security, where people can live and how Australians see their future. Bringing together political thinkers and community housing experts, this session will explore how housing is reshaping our politics, why meaningful reform remains so difficult and what could shift the debate.

And this won't be a conversation only for those in the room: the session will be recorded, with more to be revealed soon.

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Speakers: Mark Degotardi, CEO Australian Community Housing