28 August 2013
Building construction went slightly backwards across Australia in the latest quarterly construction figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and more action is needed if the building industry is to fill the downturn from the mining industry, says the Urban Taskforce.
Building construction work done is the best measure to see how the industry is impacting on jobs, says Urban Taskforce CEO, Chris Johnson. While housing approvals and completions are good statistics, it is dollars spent that best equate to jobs on the ground.
The construction figures show that non-residential building work went backwards by 2.1% over the last year and overall building construction only grew by 1.38%.
When the building construction costs for residential and for non-residential projects are divided by the populations of each state, it is clear that NSW is still lagging behind Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. NSW per capita performance on residential construction expenditure has been flat for the last 3 quarters while non-residential has lifted slightly.
Recent housing approval and completion figures in NSW have shown major improvements over the last year but as yet these have not translated into construction dollar improvements. This makes the planning reforms even more important for NSW so that strong encouragement for more building construction can flow from a more supportive planning system.
At a national level government must also be supporting growth in the building construction industry through reduction in regulations particularly where there is overlap between federal and state rules.
Whoever wins the federal election on 7th September needs to make building construction a national priority.
See the Quarterly total building- Value per capita graph below:
