Greens’ multibillion-dollar plan to solve housing crisis in four years

The workforce of the state government’s in-house builder would be quadrupled under a Queensland Greens push to clear the social housing waiting list within four years.

Greens MP Amy MacMahon

The workforce of the state government’s in-house builder would be quadrupled under a Queensland Greens push to clear the social housing waiting list within four years.

The plan would involve billions of dollars in public spending, including $500m in upfront costs to put in place enough equipment and workshops so tradies could work.

Under the Greens’ vision, taxpayers would also front up $500m so government-owned QBuild could buy insolvent building companies.

The Greens will on Tuesday announce their plan to expand QBuild from 2300 workers to 10,000.

They believe this will allow them to clear the social housing waiting list — which stands at 45,000 — within four years.

Greens MP Amy MacMahon said the state could not solve the housing crisis unless the government got back into the business of building homes.

“Since Labor came to power, the number of social homes per Queenslander has fallen by 10 per cent,” she said.

“People are having to sleep in tents and cars across the state because of Labor’s complete and utter failure to build enough public housing.

“Rapidly expanding our state-owned construction company to bring on thousands more tradespeople and apprentices is a commonsense way to speed up the public housing build Queenslanders desperately need.”

The plan will be funded through the Greens’ “public property developer”, which would invest $60bn into building 100,000 public homes over six years.