diff --git a/IkiWiki/Plugin/htmlbalance.pm b/IkiWiki/Plugin/htmlbalance.pm
index 261e273aa..26f8e494b 100644
--- a/IkiWiki/Plugin/htmlbalance.pm
+++ b/IkiWiki/Plugin/htmlbalance.pm
@@ -10,7 +10,6 @@ package IkiWiki::Plugin::htmlbalance;
 use warnings;
 use strict;
 use IkiWiki 3.00;
-use HTML::TreeBuilder;
 use HTML::Entities;
 
 sub import {
@@ -30,6 +29,8 @@ sub sanitize (@) {
 	my %params=@_;
 	my $ret = '';
 
+	eval q{use HTML::TreeBuilder};
+	error $@ if $@;
 	my $tree = HTML::TreeBuilder->new();
 	$tree->ignore_unknown(0);
 	$tree->ignore_ignorable_whitespace(0);
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 8449e9ce7..3c52bed3a 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@ ikiwiki (3.00) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
     logo developed by Anna Hess. The official logo does not seem destined to
     be free.
   * comments: Add cache avoidance.
+  * htmlbalance: Demand-load HTML::TreeBuilder to avoid failing test suite
+    if it is not present.
 
  -- Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>  Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:49:36 -0500