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Fears over the state of housing in Australia are increasing, with the issue set to play an even bigger role in the next Australian election, according to new research.
Master Builders Australia has released new research collected by independent Queensland-based firm Insightly showing that voters are increasingly concerned about the cost of Australian housing, regarding it as a pressing election issue heading into 2025.
Responses from more than 1,600 voters were collected over the course of a week in mid-November, from residents all across the country.
According to the resulting report, while only 8 per cent of voters said that housing was the most important issue to them in November 2023, 12 months later nearly a quarter cited the cost of housing – rental prices, mortgage payments and council rates – as their most pressing concern.
They were part of the wider two-thirds of respondents who said that the cost of living was their biggest issue, with general expenses and food cited as the other two biggest pressures.
Moreover, the vast majority of those who responded to the survey – 90 per cent – said that they felt it was difficult to afford either the cost of renting or buying in Australia, and 85 per cent agreed that there was a shortage of housing across the nation.
Heading into the election year, 70 per cent said they felt that the Albanese government has not done enough to address housing issues, with the same proportion stating that they believe housing issues had damaged the quality of life that could be found in their communities. Furthermore, 70 per cent also agreed that the housing crisis had worsened over the last 12 months.
Master Builders’ CEO Denita Wawn called the findings “very sombre figures” that revealed the extent to which Australian “households and businesses are hurting”.
“We’ve seen the housing crisis worsen over the last 18 months with more than one in three Australians now going without essentials like food or medicine to pay their rent or mortgage,” she noted.
According to the research, roughly a third Australians have foregone medical treatment, educational spending or cut back on groceries to pay for their housing costs in the last 12 months.
“The majority of Australians think the federal government has more to do to solve the housing crisis and Master Builders agrees,” Wawn said, noting that 65 per cent of respondents put the responsibility for solving this crisis on the shoulders of the federal government.
All of the proposals for mitigating the nation’s housing issues were supported by at least half of respondents, who stressed the importance of getting inflation and interest rates under control, increasing spending on infrastructure, skilling the construction workforce, speeding up planning approvals and increasing density.
With a federal election looming early in 2025, Wawn said it was clear that voters would be “looking at all parties for real and tangible solutions to the housing crisis and we urge them to work with industry to make this happen”.
“The building and construction industry is ready to get on with the job after a difficult few years, but we can’t deliver unless governments do their bit to ease cost pressures and reverse declining productivity,” 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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