Editorial: Council leads the way on housing

Brisbane City Council is prepared to invest to spark up the local housing market. The state government needs to do the same, writes the editor.

Brisbane City Council will slash infrastructure fees for new apartments.

Brisbane City Council has set a challenge for the state government – to put your money where your mouth is when it comes to helping fix the housing crisis.

The council’s Housing Supply Action Plan, which we exclusively revealed yesterday, will slash infrastructure fees for new apartments to encourage the private sector to get building.

The catalyst is extraordinary new figures that just 724 apartments were completed in Brisbane last year – one-fifth of the average over every one of the past eight years, of almost 4000. Further, over the past three years there have been 35,000 people move to Brisbane – while the number of rental properties has fallen by 9500.

It is clear this is a challenge that requires more than just tinkering around the edges, which is pretty well what the government has so far done – and that’s the same administration that has just forecast in its recently released draft South East Queensland Regional Plan that another 8500 new homes a year will need to be built to meet this continuing demand over the next two decades.

The council strategy is a step-change in that it recognises the new housing sector can no longer be treated just as a reliable cash cow to be milked by way of upfront fees and charges. It is an overdue acknowledgment that when the business environment gets tough, sometimes governments must actually invest to stimulate activity – in this case by way of potentially large amounts of lost revenue for the council.

The council has not provided public costings, but some back-of-envelope maths would suggest it is set to forgo somewhere between $30m and $90m in revenue in just the next couple of years, depending on the completion rate of current and future housing approvals.

Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner clearly believes that’s a hit to the bottom line worth taking. We agree. This is a tough time to construct anything, so help is needed.

As Mr Schrinner observed: “The development and construction industries are currently falling well short of that due to increasing costs, supply chain disruptions and labour shortages, creating a perfect storm that’s led to the housing crisis.”

This is a big challenge for the government, which has so far responded to the housing and rental crisis with a blizzard of policies – from a $2bn housing investment fund to boost public and affordable housing levels over coming years, to strategies to encourage build-to-rent projects.

These and other strategies such as transfer duty concession and grants for first-home buyers are all arguably useful tools for trying to address our current housing shortage. But they boil down to tweaking around the edges.

The government also has many other policy levers it could pull, in particular, stamp duty and land tax.

The problem of course is that these various property-related taxes are huge revenue streams for the government, which have grown steadily over the years thanks to increasing asset prices and a growing population.

However, in the current construction market one of the few variables is government fees and charges.

Brisbane City Council has recognised this and is prepared to invest to spark up the local housing market. If it really cares, the government needs to look at doing the same thing.

ONE MORE REASON TO RETURN TO NORMAL

They were necessary at the time, but Queensland Health’s decision to (probably) scrap its Covid vaccination mandates for staff is now a victory for commonsense.

It is also a significant step on our shared path back to normal life from the pandemic years – a moment in time that is significant.

Life races by so quickly that it is sometimes easy to forget what we all went through together, from those scary first few weeks and months as our world became our living room to those seemingly endless months of worry a year later as we endured the threat and then the reality of lockdowns.

While the world is yet to fully reset, this week’s easing inflation numbers were the latest evidence that we are now well on the way.

Remember during the worst of the lockdowns when we all pledged to get through this together?

We must never lose sight of this sentiment – particularly as we head into what could be a divisive few weeks leading into the referendum to establish an Indigenous Voice.

One way we could each show a renewed commitment to that goal of togetherness is to welcome back those thousands of Queensland Health staff who over the past two years have been sacked, resigned or are still on leave as a result of their unwillingness to have the Covid vaccine.

That all but a few of us had our vaccinations was the thing that bought us our freedoms. Most did so willingly. That battle now won, it is time to move forward together.