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The Business Council of Australia (BCA) is calling for a major overhaul of the nation’s housing approval process.
The organisation has provided an early look at its forthcoming housing report, titled It’s time to say yes to housing, which recommends a number of measures to speed up the process of getting new homes built and renovations underway to increase the nation’s housing supply.
In the report, which is set to be released in full later in October, the BCA will be calling for greater oversight of councils and state intervention in a number of instances to take the power out of local government hands.
The report will recommend:
1. Statewide council report cards in every state/territory to transparently monitor the performance of local government approvals, including the time taken to make an assessment (from lodgment to construction approval).
2. State government intervention powers to remove the planning authority of councils which continually underperform in the assessment of new homes and, conversely, funding to reward councils that are high performers.
3. Elevating housing projects of significance to state governments for approval, including the approval of adjacent supporting infrastructure.
4. An accountable new state government concierge service to monitor and speed up decisions and concurrence processes across government agencies.
5. A new mechanism for housing builders to force a local or state government to make a decision, either to reject or approve, if a decision exceeds statutory time frames.
6. Better approaches to community consultation that respond to legitimate concerns and strike a fairer balance between local voices and broader regional housing needs.
Stressing the need to speed up approvals if the nation has any hope of coming close to meeting its housing goals, the BCA noted that to achieve the construction of 1.2 million new dwellings under the National Housing Accord over the next five years, Australia has to build roughly 240,000 new homes per year. According to the latest ABS dwelling completions data for 2023–24, Australia fell short of that by 64,000 dwellings.
Business Council chief executive Bran Black noted that the council’s recommendations would be hard to implement, but stressed the need to “turbocharge the assessment and approval process” to get homes on the ground.
“This supply crisis, driven by a shortfall, means demand for limited houses further pushes up prices and rents, driving higher inflation which hurts all Australians.
“Plain and simple, we need more supply, and we want to work with local and state governments to speed up their housing decisions, so builders can get on with the job of delivering places for people to live,” Black said.
He noted that Business Council affiliates reported drastically varying accounts of dealing with local governments across the country, thus prompting the organisation’s focus on bringing lagging LGAs up to scratch.
“I hear from members that some councils are highly professional, while others are unresponsive and can take months to make a decision, in some cases running down the clock because they can,” Black said.
Speaking on the recommendation of giving states the power to assess and approve more residential housing projects deemed to be of high significance, Black argued that they had better powers to assess stakeholder feedback from all angles.
“State governments are best able to balance local feedback with the broader economic and policy priorities faced by the community around the need for housing,” Black said.
More information on the BCA’s recommendation for a “state concierge service” to coordinate approval and concurrence processes across government departments and agencies is set to be released along with the full report in late October.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
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