The real culprits of the housing crisis

Politicians in all the major parties love coming up with a massive solution to a problem and then walking away claiming the job is done. Nine times out of 10 the job is barely started.

The Coalition is as guilty as the Albanese government in playing this sort of game.

But it so happens that the latest example is the Albanese housing fund, which attacks the easiest part of the rental crisis to solve – the shortage of money for rental dwellings. Overseas institutions are anxious to invest.

There are far bigger problems than money in the rental mire.

I was delighted to see the chief executive of Brickworks, Lindsay Partridge, risking government recriminations to tell the truth.

Partridge starts by actually welcoming the Housing Australia Future Fund, but then explains what else needs to be done to even begin to overcome the rental crisis.

He starts with the parents who are advising their young children to go to university rather than take up a trade.

He believes the current generation of young people are stuck in front of their smartphones and screens, and not interested in going outside. They prefer playing on smartphones to being a plumber, tiler, bricklayer or electrician.

Partridge says the parent/child combination is making the current shortages of trades – vital for building new homes – much worse.

Brickworks CEO Lindsay Partridge points out how the lack of skilled trades people will thwart the housing scheme. Picture: Hollie Adams

Partridge has two solutions and I want to add a few of my own:

• The federal government controls immigration, and it needs to bring in more trades people who can build houses because the tradies aren’t here. Partridge says we need migrants who like working outside, like doing hard work, great tradesmen. They are the people we need to bring into the country.

• The housing crisis and affordability issue is made worse by state bureaucracies that are incredibly slow in approving land and housing developments. In New Zealand, it takes around 21 days to get a house approved. In Australia, it can take six to nine months, all going well. Land can take 10 years to get approved, and someone has to pay that holding cost for 10 years while the bureaucracy “mucks around.”

• I would add that NSW has the worst delay bureaucracies in the country. But Queensland and Victoria are just as active in deepening their rental crisis. Both states introduced tenant rights that forced out vast numbers of investors with houses to rent. Victoria lost about one quarter of its rental stock as a result of that government blunder.

• Partridge is too diplomatic to take the causes of the skills shortage to the next stage. State governments believe there are votes in infrastructure spending, but the massive projects they embark on suck the reduced availability of skilled tradespeople out of the housing sector into infrastructure.

In Victoria, a series of major infrastructure projects will reach conclusion around 2025 and 2026 and that has the potential of spilling out for housing construction not just conventional trades people but designers and architects and other service providers who have been working on the projects.

They are needed in the early stages of the build for rental projects on the drawing board, and the state desperately needs them. In theory, they could be available at just the right time.

But they won't be. Victoria has dreamt up a new multi-billion infrastructure project, the so-called “train to nowhere”, and has ordered a tunnelling machine and other equipment to start boring somewhere in the eastern suburbs until the rating agencies do their job and say “enough is enough” and stop the endless Victorian borrowing.

Meanwhile, it means that the shortage of trades that could have been at least partially alleviated will now remain, and it will simply not be possible to build the number of buildings required to overcome the rental shortage unless massive migration can be arranged as Partridge is suggesting.

It would have been wonderful if the interests of those desperately seeking rental accommodation were put first instead of a few infrastructure votes and employment in infrastructure for CFMEU people.

In the Queensland situation is not that different because of the Olympic Games but at least the there is a purpose in the expenditure.

There is another aspect to the infrastructure borrowing binges as the states have been engaged in.

The expenditure has greatly stimulated the economies and forced the Reserve Bank to increase interest rates much further than would otherwise have been required to slow down the economy.

So it’s not just the rental people who have suffered because of the trade shortages so created, but also those with mortgages who must pay interest rates higher than otherwise would have been necessary.

I feel for those who cannot find accommodation or who are deep in mortgage stress. We need local media to highlight the real culprits. Currently, that simply does not happen.