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States will be rewarded for boosting approvals and cutting red tape to get more new homes on the ground.
The $900 million will be established by Treasurer Jim Chalmers to incentivise states and territories to enact productivity-enhancing policies. While the fund will not be limited to housing, it’s expected that residential construction will be a key area of focus on a “menu of options” that states and territories can pursue to receive funding benefits.
This is reported to include funding boosts to jurisdictions that streamline building approvals and commercial planning and zoning, and that remove barriers to the uptake of modern construction methods.
The Business Council of Australia recently called for the re-establishment of such a fund, which was deployed in the 1990s and early 2000s by the Keating and Howard governments to encourage states to pursue competition reforms.
The news of the $900 million fund was roundly welcomed by the Property Council of Australia (PCA), which described reforms to state and territory planning systems as a “golden lever” that must be pulled for the country to tackle the housing crisis.
“Rewarding state and local government housing supply innovations should be top of mind,” said PCA CEO Mike Zorbas.
He noted that the council had called for the instatement of a similar fund in 2016, flagging the need to boost housing supply even then.
“We would have 1.3 million extra homes today if our planning systems retained the efficiency they had in the 20 years before 2001,” Zorbas noted.
Master Builders’ CEO Denita Wawn also welcomed the Treasurer’s announcement, stating her belief it would “support a faster roll out of housing across state and territories”.
“Productivity in building and construction has been in decline for too long, with labour productivity down 18 per cent over the last decade,” Wawn noted.
“We thank the Treasurer for putting productivity back on the national agenda and listening to our concerns around barriers to building,” she added.
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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