Brickworks boss says we must prioritise bringing in tradies to address Australia’s worsening housing crisis

The boss of the nation’s largest brickmaker has warned any review of the migration intake needs to prioritise bringing in tradies to help the housing crisis.

Brickworks CEO Lindsay Partridge says Australia needs to bring in immigrants with building trades to help alleviate the housing shortage. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

The boss of the nation’s largest brickmaker and leading housing materials supplier has warned any review of the country’s migration intake needed to prioritise bringing in tradies — such as fitters, turners and electricians — to work on home construction sites and address Australia’s worsening housing crisis.

Brickworks chief executive Lindsay Partridge told The Australian on Tuesday his company was predicting a pull back and slowdown in housing construction volumes through 2024 as current projects were completed, but then a building boom into 2025 as a fast-growing population desperately demanded new homes.

In recent days a national debate has blown up around migration levels with 600,000 people expected to settle in Australia this calendar year, which many economists believe is fuelling inflation, higher rents and also exacerbating the housing crisis.

In September AMP chief economist Shane Oliver called for annual net migration levels to be more than halved to 200,000 people — against a likely outcome of 500,000 people in the year to June — for the country to be able to tackle the acute housing shortage which was driving up home prices and rents.

Speaking to The Australian before the Brickworks annual general meeting on Tuesday, where he told shareholders short-term challenges across its industrial property portfolio would see a 10 per cent property valuation decline, Mr Partridge said Australia needed to bring in tradies and skilled workers as a priority.

“There is no use bringing in anybody if they are not a building tradie, you are wasting your time, because where are they going to live?”, Mr Partridge told The Australian.

“That has been my argument with governments, they need to be focusing on having immigrants that have building trades like we have done in the past so we can build the homes for everybody.

“I understand why the government let the immigration (levels) catch up and part of that was the students returning and there has been enormous labour shortages but we need trades, we need skilled people, we don’t need tertiary qualified people, we need people who are fitters and turners, electricians, these sorts of people to build these homes.”

Australia needs skilled workers, such as bricklayers, to build homes and alleviate the housing shortage, says Brickworks boss Lindsay Partridge.

He said the huge pipeline of federal and state government building works, such as infrastructure projects like roads, airports and ports, was also pushing up the price of building supplies and making it almost impossible to get a hold of key building materials when trying to build a new home.

“It has been made worse by all the public works, shortage of raw materials because the government is sucking it all in for their own projects. You can’t get concrete during the day sometime, you have to get it at night-time.”

At a trading update provided at the Brickworks AGM Mr Partridge said sales across its Australian and US building products business remained resilient while improved margins had resulted in first quarter earnings being ahead of the prior corresponding period in both Australia and North America. For the first quarter, sales revenue was flat in Australia and slightly higher in North America.

However, he continued to see a decline in new housing approvals, with the housing market to slow in Australia in 2024.

“Despite this positive start to the year, order intake is softening and we expect conditions to become more challenging for the remainder of fiscal 2024, as the existing pipeline of work is progressively built out.

“Looking beyond the short-term weakness, Australia appears to be on the cusp of a significant building boom, with record immigration levels exacerbating an already chronic housing under-supply issue.”

Mr Partridge said the slowdown in coming months would give Brickworks an opportunity to “sequentially take plants offline to complete maintenance work and manage stock levels”, but Bowral operations, where it currently has an order backlog of around 16 weeks, would continue.

Turning to Brickworks’s $2,2bn industrial property portfolio, which includes prime industrial land in western Sydney, Mr Partridge said the company expected a 10 per cent property valuation decline due to significant dislocation in response to economic volatility, rising interest rates and tighter credit conditions driving a change in external valuation methods.

Shares in Brickworks at noon were down 1.6 per cent to $25.78.