Editorial: A million reasons to build more houses

If we’re ever going to solve the problem of housing affordability, this is how governments should be doing it, writes the editor.

Brisbane’s median house price has breached the $1m mark.

Brisbane’s median house price has cracked the $1m mark for the first time – great news if you’re already in the market, but terrible if you’re not.

The 6.93 per cent jump in the 12 months to June in the PropTrack Home Price Index translates to $68,300, or about the same as an average salary.

Unit owners had an even better year in terms of dollar gains, with the price of apartments soaring by 12.9 per cent, or $82,300, to $708,000.

That means while homeowners picked up the equivalent of a year’s wages simply by owning or paying off some property, renters have seen their prospects of ever having their own place fade even further into the future.

This latest increase follows a 15.9 per cent jump in prices in the previous 12 months and highlights the enormous job facing the Crisafulli government in its efforts to improve the state’s housing affordability.

The government’s approach is two-pronged. One is the strategy adopted by all governments of whatever political persuasion of offering subsidies and handouts to new home buyers.

Last week’s state Budget included a range of measures “to help more Queenslanders purchase their own home”, among them not only extending the previous Labor government’s First Home Owner grant scheme for another 12 months but also boosting it from $15,000 to $30,000.

Treasurer David Janetzki also announced a $165m Boost to Buy shared equity scheme – which was described as Australia’s “most generous”.

Politicians always love handing out public money but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that such schemes ultimately do little more than pump up prices because the big issue with housing affordability isn’t access to money but access to new housing.

That’s to say, the problem is on the supply side, which, to its credit the Crisafulli government has recognised with the second prong to it housing affordability strategy – its new $2bn Residential Activation Fund.

The Residential Activation Fund’s aim is to “accelerate delivery of the critical infrastructure that is fundamental to getting more homes built sooner” – the government’s target is one million new homes in the next 20 years.

Infrastructure and Planning Minister Jarrod Bleijie announced the fund’s first allocation of public money earlier this week, $135m to build a wastewater facility at Chambers Flat, which it said would give Logan City Council the ability to build 20,000 new homes.

Logan City Council Mayor Jon Raven said that without the state government’s funding the council would have had to stop approving new houses by the end of 2027 because “we just would not have been able to service them”.

If we’re ever going to solve the problem of housing affordability, this is how governments should be doing it – by working together to identify and solve the problems blocking the supply chain – from a shortage of wastewater treatment plants to complex and confusing planning and approvals regime.

Politicians, as we’ve said, love handing out subsidies – and who doesn’t like a handout?

But with Brisbane house prices rising the way they are the last thing we need is yet another source of easy money to fuel an already overheated market.

DON’T TAKE CHINA’S ADVICE

Yesterday in this column we examined the increasing pressure the US is placing on its allies to increase their spending on defence, after winning a commitment from NATO countries to raise their defence budgets to 5 per cent of GDP.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong will this week have to explain Australia’s reluctance to boost defence spending about the planned 2.35 per cent by 2034/25, as she meets our Quad Alliance partners – the US, Japan and India in Washington.

But in a curious piece of timing, the Chinese ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian has written an opinion article in The Australian urging Australia not to lift defence spending, declaring we are friends, not foes. He wrote that “some countries” (read the US) have been slandering China’s “normal military build-up” and were fuelling a global arms race.

Normal? Hardly. As stated in the Defence Department’s strategic review in 2023; “China’s military build-up is now the largest and most ambitious of any country since the end of the Second World War.”

Not only that, but provocations in the South China Sea – including Chinese jets firing flares at an Australian plane – and dangerous rhetoric over the sovereignty of Taiwan show that the rearmed nation is determined to throw its weight around.

It is clear that we should take our advice on defence spending from our trusted military ally the US.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details here