Two years into the landmark housing agreement, new analysis finds building activity still well below targets and long-term averages
Progress under the National Housing Accord has been uneven over the past year, with new home building showing some improvement but approvals and completions remaining well below both the Accord's targets and the decade-long average that preceded it, new analysis by Master Builders Australia has found.
Source: ABS Building Activity. * Annualised based on two quarters of available data
The findings coincide with the second anniversary of the Accord, a joint commitment between federal and state governments and industry to deliver 1.2 million new homes over five years.
Master Builders Australia currently forecasts the country will fall 204,000 homes short of that target.
"That's why builders were so bitterly disappointed by the federal Budget," said Denita Wawn (pictured right), chief executive of Master Builders Australia.
"Not only were there broken promises, tax hikes, and cuts to apprenticeship funding, but there was a real lack of ambition in the new announcements on things like infrastructure spending and red tape reduction."
Wawn added that the current policy settings had failed to generate the scale of activity required to meet federal and state targets. "An ambitious target necessitates ambitious government policy, and clearly, the policy settings need further reform," she said.
"Tinkering around the edges won't work. It's time for bold policy that will turbocharge the building of more homes."
Wawn outlined four priority areas for reform: "The policy reforms need to focus on workforce numbers, red tape, enabling infrastructure and tax incentives," she said.
Master Builders Australia is calling on the federal government to pursue workforce expansion through apprenticeship investment and skilled migration; increased public and private funding for housing-enabling infrastructure; tax incentives including accelerated depreciation for capital works and an expanded Instant Asset Write-Off; and regulatory reform, including a 25% reduction in construction red tape and a streamlined National Construction Code.
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