Six weeks ago, Clare O’Neil jumped from the frying pan of Home Affairs into the fire of Housing. The job of fixing Australia’s housing affordability crisis is arguably the biggest challenge in politics (outside preventing National Party MPs from saying silly things about competition policy) and crucial to Labor’s electoral fortunes.

This challenge was underlined by our front-page story on day one of The Australian Financial Review Property Summit. The story detailed how the construction industry is warning that rising building costs and higher-for-longer interest rates deterring new home starts mean the Albanese government’s ambitious target to build 1.2 million new homes over the next five years is unlikely to be hit.