Affordable housing availability has now become an issue in his MacKillop electorate according to re-elected Liberal MP Nick McBride.

“One of the last towns I saw suffer the affordable housing issue was Millicent,” Mr McBride said.

“As extrapolated across the regions, we always knew there was a problem in Bordertown, it certainly moved on very quickly down to Naracoorte and one of the last towns was Millicent.

“There is a large social housing cohort in Millicent but some of the houses are condemned and not lived in because of the maintenance backlog over a number of years in terms of government, not just over the last previous government.

“But now there is a shortage of housing there as well.

“The Kimberly-Clark Australia Millicent Mill needs workers and so forth.

“There are a number of other businesses in the region at Millicent, some are fishermen, some are forestry workers and others are in horticulture and so forth.

“It is hard to find workers if there is no housing available to them.”

Hundreds of ex-South Australian Housing Trust houses have been sold in Millicent in the past 15 years.

This State Government agency now known as Housing SA had a continuous association with Millicent since the early 1940s when 30 timber-framed houses were built in Grigg Terrace to house workers at the fledgling Cellulose mill at Snuggery.

The SAHT formerly had a strong presence in such towns as Mount Burr, Tantanoola and Beachport.

Housing SA transferred all its Millicent properties to a not-for-profit provider Uniting Housing in 2017.