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Urban Taskforce Australia CEO, Tom Forrest, today welcomed news that the Commonwealth will dedicate $2 billion towards assisting the states with housing supply.
The Albanese Government has belatedly realised that the timing of the Housing Accord Bonus to the states (payments are to be made after the Accord expires in July 2029) was not helping the states boost housing supply now. Urban Taskforce first called for Accord Housing Target funding to be brought forward on September 11, 2023 and has consistently done so since.
In this, the last few days before the federal election on Saturday, the penny has dropped, and the Commonwealth have dug into the Treasury coffers to deliver a very welcome $2 billion up-front boost to assist the states. But there is one area where the Labor Government policy book is still blinkered. That is in their apparent ideological commitment to supporting only social housing and not supporting the private housing market which delivers over 95% of the new houses for all Australians.
Investment in social housing is an important social welfare measure. It is true that the failure of state governments and their planners and infrastructure agencies to support housing supply to match demand has resulted in increased demand for social housing. But social housing funding does not solve the problem. The problem is with the costs and affordability of market housing.
After the election, it is critical that the Commonwealth works with the private sector property development and construction sector to clear bottlenecks and drive planning and regulatory reform that benefits all housing supply.
For too long the Commonwealth has listened to property advisers from within the Canberra bubble. Any time spent listening to Max Chandler Mather is time wasted that could be spent speaking with those who deliver 95% of housing supply – the private sector.
Housing supply represents the sick dog of Australian politics. The message from the Urban Taskforce is that whomever wins the election on Saturday, they must stop trying to cure the sick dog with band-aid solutions which treat the symptom (social housing funding support) while ignoring the cause of the problem: the lack of feasibility of market housing supply due to the restrictions of planning systems, state based fees, taxes and charges, as well as the over-regulation of building construction.