Simply name the biggest, almost plausible number you can think of for a headline to make it seem like you are doing something, then do virtually nothing to achieve it.
🎯National Housing Accord – 1.2m over 5 years 🎯Victorian Housing Statement – 800k over 10 years 🎯NSW Housing Target – 377k by 2029 🎯QLD Housing Target – 1.0m by 2046
The Housing Accord is approaching 2 years old. The Victorian Housing Statement nearly a year. Yet we are further behind than ever.
All remain fanciful in current circumstances (save, perhaps, QLD) and notice each government now walking back expectations calling the targets "aspirational".
It's disappointing that numbers are the most on offer from political leaders. Targets must be coupled with empowering and directing the public service to deliver real solutions that prioritise unlocking feasible new housing supply – at scale.
Notice how targets are also spun as "we are building X homes"? Governments do not build most homes – developers do.
Some say it's better to have a target than none at all. But targets without acting to make them real, based on the advice of those who actually deliver homes, are useless.
📏The only relevant KPI is how many homes are actually started and built, not what your aspiration is.
I run a business capable of feasibly delivering thousands of new homes of different configurations and price points across the country in the next five years. These are real, committed, funded projects. We can start work immediately.
❌Yet despite the political rhetoric, every attempt to unlock #approvals faster and get more homes built sooner meets red tape, inaction, finger-pointing or policy barriers.
Detailed requests for #facilitation to unlock held up projects, no matter which state, invariably find a reason why assistance can't be granted. It's just all too hard. We are years behind, and we are not alone.
Unless your proposal fits a perfect ideological box, nothing happens. Sometimes even that isn't enough to get things moving.
Governments need to be held to account on delivering results, not empty promises. It's time to cut the BS and do something real and radical, not assume BAU will fix itself.
🤔My #development industry colleagues and I are very ready to do our part to reach the targets – we just remain too reliant on others doing their job, who aren't, to get there.
If we don't start yesterday, the result will be more Australians living in cardboard homes than real ones.