Foreign workers not the answer to construction crisis: Hutchies

The head of Australia’s largest private builder, Hutchies, fears the real answer to the construction crisis is being ignored.

Scott Hutchinson of the largest privately owned construction company in Australia, Hutchinson Builders. Picture: Russell Shakespeare

The chair of Australia’s largest private builder, Hutchies, has warned that fast-tracking migration of foreign building industry workers is not the real answer to the construction crisis.

Scott Hutchinson, chairman of $3.3b family firm Hutchinson Builders which employs over 1,900 people, said a proposal to classify construction occupations as top priority for skilled visa processing “might work in the medium term” but warned it was not the real answer to the construction crisis.

NEWS:

Home prices break fresh records in Brisbane, Qld

Where NRL coach Craig Bellamy is buying up a storm

Landing on his feet: Kev’s $6m fallback plan

Mr Hutchinson, whose family company averages over 225 projects a year nationwide, believes the situation will continue to remain exacerbated until the steam is taken out of rampaging demand levels.

“In this day and age, we’re so short of people, but I think a more likely solution is it just settling down.”

He said bringing in foreign workers “will help a little bit, but it’s not the answer though”.

“We’ve just got to wait for the market to settle down.”

Scott Hutchinson is the chairman of Hutchies which employs over 1,900 people. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

His view may be at odds with the goals of the Property Council which has been lobbying government to speed up legislation to make it faster and easier to get housing projects going – potentially extending the construction crisis even further into the future.

Latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data out Tuesday show the number of dwelling approvals fell 6.1 per cent in August to 13,991, after an 11 per cent rise in July – which was met with disappointment by Property Council group executive policy and advocacy Matthew Kandelaars.

“We need to increase the number of homes approved and ensure a strong pipeline of apartment supply, to drive towards our housing targets at scale. But the reality is that it has never been more difficult and costly to get apartments out of the ground.”

Mr Kandelaars wants governments to cut taxes and ease planning systems to speed things up.

“Over the past year, we approved nearly 9,000 fewer apartments and townhouses across the country than the in preceding 12-month period. We need that number to increase month on month to build the homes Australians need.”

“One of the quickest solutions is for parliament to pass compromise build-to-rent legislation backed by the Property Council, Community Housing Industry Association and National Shelter, that can unlock 105,000 new apartments by 2034, with 10 per cent affordable,” he said.

Any foreign workers would need to be retrained for Australian conditions. Picture: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Mr Hutchinson said any speeding up of foreign workers for construction to meet that level of demand “has its difficulties”.

Hutchies don’t have a policy to bring in workers from offshore for projects, “but we’ve used Korean tilers who’d formed a gang here”.

“It would be better if they came out as a unit,” he said, as bringing in individuals “is not something that’s popular with the other trades”.

“It might work but they’d have to be trained in a lot of our ways. Some places would find it quite strange.”

Ironically, a record level of overseas migration – a factor controlled by policies set by federal politicians – is one of the main reasons the construction and housing sectors are under immense pressure, with the 2022-2023 financial year alone seeing 518,000 people added to Australia’s population from offshore.

Australian Bureau of Statistics head of migration statistics Jenny Dobak said “although overseas migration was a record high in 2022-23, the cycle of migration has not returned to the pattern seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic”.

The only real answer to the construction crisis was for the steam to come off demand, according to Mr Hutchinson. Picture: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

“In 2022-23 the number of migrants arriving on temporary visas has gone up but the number departing has reduced slightly. Migrant arrivals went up by 73 per cent compared to a year ago. Migrant departures, on the other hand, fell by 2 per cent and are at the lowest level since 2006-07.”

Mr Hutchinson said they had foreign workers come sporadically via an international exchange program rewarding high performers.

“We’ve had exchange carpenters from Denmark and they’re wonderful. Hutchies have got a program where we send people overseas and they send to us, but that’s just to reward them, like giving project managers experience in Canada. That’s something different that Hutchies does.”

FOLLOW SOPHIE FOSTER