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The group has put forward 29 proposals that it believes can get Australia back on track to build 1.2 million new homes over five years.
Foreshadowed in announcement from the Business Council of Australia earlier in the month, the group has now released its comprehensive review of the nation’s housing crisis with a slew of recommendations for tackling the challenge.
The most substantial proposal contained in the paper dubbed, Say Yes to Housing, is that the government should create a national fund to incentivise states and territories to fix their housing regulation, planning and approval processes.
Business Council of Australia chief executive Bran Black compared the model to the National Competition Policy that came in during the late ’90s, which directed roughly $5 billion to state and territory governments when they successfully rolled out economic reforms.
Under this program, the business lobby would like to see states incentivised to fix approvals processes and reduce their reliance on stamp duty.
“Stamp duty is a horrible tax that stops Australians getting into a home,” Black said.
“Stamp duty represents a massive upfront cost for people who want to move, whether to downsize and free up a family home or to move closer to a new job, and we’d like to see the federal government establish a reform fund to incentivise states to phase stamp duty out and replace it with a land tax,” he explained.
The report also recommends a number of other measures, some of which would be included as policies the states could enact to earn incentives.
Other major areas of reform recommended in the report include:
- Rezoning land to legalise housing in areas in demand and creating more flexible and consistent zoning rules that respond to need.
- Building more infrastructure to support new housing.
- Faster and more efficient approval process to accelerate critical developments.
- Performance management of council approval processes and giving state governments new intervention and approval powers.
- Addressing labour and materials shortages and training more workers in the skills needed to build housing.
- New approaches to community consultation and heritage management.
- Ensuring taxes and charges do not impact investment for new housing supply.
- Tackling criminal behaviour on building sites.
Speaking of the reason that the council has decided to take a firm stance on housing policy measures, Black said the organisation believes the country’s “prosperity is being held back because many Australians can’t buy a home or are paying too much rent”.
“Fixing this issue means putting hard but important policy changes on the table,” he added.
Black noted that the council backs many of the measures that are already being rolled out by governments at all levels, but added that with the immense scale of the task, the country needs “every good reform on the table if we’re to hit our targets”.
One of the report’s key focus areas is ensuring Australia has a workforce to meet the challenge.
“We urgently need to address Australia’s skills shortage crisis, because we can’t build homes if we don’t have enough trades to build them. We need strong incentive structures in place to boost numbers and opportunities for young Australians in the construction trades,” Black said.
“We also need skilled migration visa settings that attract the trained workers we require and better systems to recognise existing qualifications.”
The report calls for states to work together on a system to accept trade licences across jurisdictions to reduce the red tape when skilled professionals cross state lines.
“There’s no sensible reason why a highly qualified tradie in one Australian state shouldn’t be recognised as a highly qualified tradie in a different Australian state, if they choose to move,” Black said.
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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