Labor to slash housing red tape

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil says red tape is making it too hard to build homes in Australia, vowing to turbocharge productivity in the construction sector.

Housing Minister Clare O'Neil: ‘A significant part of the problem is that for a 40-year period, all levels of government have been adding new restrictions on the building of homes in one way or another.’ Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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Clare O’Neil says red tape is making it too hard to build houses in Australia, vowing to turbocharge productivity in the construction sector as she admits meeting the target of 1.2 million new homes by the end of the decade is “going to be hard”.

The Housing Minister told The Australian she would also work with the construction sector to encourage the take-up of productivity-enhancing innovations such as robotics and more home-building in factories.

Declaring it was not everyday a Labor minister acknowledged that “regulation is a significant issue”, Ms O’Neil said a priority in this term of parliament would be working with state ministers and local councils to slash red tape holding up housing.

She said a template for her goal to improve construction productivity would be a report released by the Productivity Commission in February, which called for a reduction of red tape, increased innovation and bolstering the number of workers.

“Why are we not building enough homes in our country? A significant part of the problem is that for a 40-year period, all levels of government have been adding new restrictions on the building of homes in one way or another,” Ms O’Neil said.

“All of which are motivated by earnest and good public policy goals. But if you’re a builder, you are confronting a thicket of regulation from every level of government that is giving builders the real impression that we don’t want them to get on with the job.

“It is too hard to build a house in Australia today, and that’s one of the issues that I’ll be working with state and territory ministers to try to unravel.”

She said planning laws were “still an area where there’s some room for us to continue to push”.

“We’re seeing big strides taken, especially in Victoria and NSW and Western Australia and some other states,” she said. “But I think we need to have a conversation with the states about what else can be done on that front.”

The cabinet minister – who was also given the portfolios of homelessness and cities following Anthony Albanese’s thumping election victory – said there were innovative techniques used overseas that were not widespread in Australia.

“Other countries are using modern construction techniques to build homes, but they are not using those techniques as widespread here in Australia,” she said.

She cited an opportunity in a robot built in WA that can be “driven onto the side of the street and lay the brickwork for a new home very quickly”.

“It’s, in some instances, building parts of a home in a factory setting, and then taking them out to the site,” she said. “In some countries, where they have really significant issues with the ­weather, they will construct their homes more that way.”

Housing was a major issue during the election campaign, with Peter Dutton and the Prime Minister rolling out policies designed to build homes and encourage first-home buyers into the market.

Ms O’Neil said Labor’s election commitments to guarantee 5 per cent deposits for first-home buyers and building 100,000 homes for that market deliberately avoided the need for legislation.

This was designed out of frustration over the delay in passing the Albanese government’s key housing policies last term, including legislation to establish the Housing Australia Future Fund and the help-to-buy scheme.

“The last parliament was not a productive place to progress the housing issue, that was as plain as anything,” she said.

“We had the Greens and the Liberals using every opportunity they could to stop us from building more homes. How anyone can sleep at night having that ­aspiration in the middle of such significant housing challenges for the country, I don’t know.”

She said the government remained committed to national cabinet’s goal of building 1.2 million homes between 2024 and 2029, despite industry groups warning the target would be missed by about 350,000.

“It is going to be hard and I’m glad that we’ve set such an ambitious target,” she said. “It is a goal that is meant to galvanise change to our housing system, not just a number that we’ve dreamt up by adding up how many houses we thought we would build anyway.

“It is going to be a real challenge, but I’m very focused on trying to get there.”