Housing Minister Clare O’Neil says she’s ‘turning away’ from ‘hyper political’ Coalition to solve housing crisis

Labor will sidestep the “hyper political” housing debate in parliament and work directly with states to get more homes built, using a simplified skilled visa system to bring in urgently needed tradies and getting more young Australians into construction.

Labor will sidestep the “hyper political” housing debate in parliament and work directly with states to get more homes built, using a simplified skilled visa system to bring in urgently needed tradies and getting more young Australians into construction.

In an exclusive interview, new Housing and Homelessness Minister Clare O’Neil has declared the delaying tactics and political point scoring by the Greens and Coalition have reaped such “unquantifiable destruction” on the federal government’s plans to address the housing crisis she is “now turning away” from the parliament as the way to solve the problem.

“At the end of the day, this is actually a very practical problem about how we can make our country build more homes for its citizens,” she said.

“The actions of the Liberals and the Greens at every point in the last two years in the housing debate has been to stand in the path of us actually solving the problem in order to make political points that really don’t even make sense.”

Ms O’Neil, who met with her state and territory housing counterparts in Western Sydney on Tuesday, said Australia’s “genuine” home ownership, rent and homelessness crises were the result of 25 years of neglect.

Housing and Homelessness Minister Clare O’Neil says she is ‘turning away’ from hyper political debate in parliament to solve housing crisis. Picture: Martin Ollman

“For a generation, Australian governments – state and federal – have not been investing enough in building homes,” she said.

Ms O’Neil said it was “really clear” the skilled migration was not working for the construction sector, which has struggled over a long period of time to navigate the difficult system.

“One of the really big issues that I see is that the migration system is really complicated, and a lot of residential construction is done by small and medium sized businesses in Australia who don’t have a big HR department and lots of specialists helping them navigate it,” she said.

“So simplification is going to be part of the story here.”

Labor is aiming to build 1.2 million new homes in five years.

Ms O’Neil said workforce shortages were the biggest barrier to Labor achieving its ambitious goal of building 1.2 million new homes over the next five years.

“Our country just doesn’t have enough carpenters and sparkies and plumbers,” she said.

“The main answer we will always have to the question of workforce shortages is that we want to train more Australians for those roles.

“But migration is going to play a role in that also.”

Housing and Homelessness Minister Clare O’Neil has been challenging the Greens and Coalition in parliament. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Ms O’Neil acknowledged migration had put pressure on a system neglected by successive governments, vowing Labor’s plan to slash international arrivals “effectively back to normal very shortly” would rebalance housing demand.

“Migration is central to Australia’s national story, but it’s got to be sustainable,” she said.

“That’s why our government is halving net overseas migration over a very short period of time.”

Labour, land availability and finance to spur on home building were key agenda items for the housing ministers’ meeting on Tuesday, with Ms O’Neil declaring the shortages across Australia’s cities and regions could only be solved through councils, states and the Commonwealth working together.

“We need to turbocharge the building of more homes for our country, and that’s my big focus and priority as minister,” she said.