Both parties are applying band-aid fixes to Australia's construction supply crisis: Labor adopted the Coalition's ban on foreign investors buying established housing while ruling out negative gearing changes worth $26 billion a year. Australia builds half as many houses per worker as 30 years ago, the Productivity Commission found.
As I told The Nightly: “Running a national business, I get the absolute pleasure of dealing with a myriad of different planning authorities”
I also said: “It could be the road authorities or water and drainage authorities, power authorities. You've got so many different groups to satisfy that you have to put a shovel in the ground,”
And I added: “If any one of them at any point starts to not do their job in a timely manner, the whole thing collapses or gets delayed.”
I went on to say: “Cash is king, and time is money when it comes to keeping a construction business afloat.”
I also made the point: “If there was a national housing tsar that could say, ‘I hear you, but this is what we’re going to do”
And finally: “What all those changes did was actually reduce a very, very substantial supply of new rental properties into the marketplace.”
The Nightly, 17 February 2025 — Read the full article