The major parties have clashed over housing targets, with Clare O’Neil criticising the opposition’s housing policy as a “melange of weird things” as new official figures reveal Labor’s goal of building 1.2m homes in five years is running 30,000 behind schedule after just six months.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data revealed there were 90,136 dwellings completed in the six months to December, including roughly 57,000 houses and 33,000 apartments.
The figures landed amid deep scepticism among construction industry insiders and economists that the government would be able to achieve its Housing Accord goal.
In a debate with her opposite number on Wednesday, the housing minister conceded there was more work to be done to reach her government’s goals, but defended the “bold and ambitious” target.
The shadow housing minister, Michael Sukkar, refused to commit the Coalition to a home-building target were they to returned to power on 3 May.
“I’m saying we’ll get to as many as we possibly can, but I’m certain it will be higher than Labor … What’s a target worth if you’re not going to get anywhere near it?”
Sukkar referred to unaffordable housing as “one of the most catastrophic policy failures in a generation”, tying the jump in migration numbers over the past three years to high home prices and rents.
But O’Neil insisted that the ambition of Labor’s target was necessary, “instead of washing our hands of the problem”.
“Michael’s talked a little bit about our national housing target, suggesting that they’re too high. What he’s really saying here is that the answer to this problem is to lower the national ambition – and low ambition is what got us here,” she said, later adding that the Coalition’s housing policy was a “melange of weird things that were written on the back of a napkin”.
Labor and the Coalition clashed this week over competing visionsfor addressing the issue of chronically unaffordable housing. But a bipartisan consensus has emerged that boosting supply will be key to boosting home ownership rates, which have been in steady decline among younger Australians.
To reach the target of 1.2m new well-located homes in the five years to mid-2029, an average of 240,000 dwellings need to be completed each year, or 120,000 every six months.
Australia has never built 240,000 in any 12-month period in data going back three decades, with the closest the 223,000 dwellings completed in the year to March 2017.
The independent property expert Cameron Kusher said: “Whilst I never believed the target was going to be achievable, we’ve started off very slowly and are well behind the target already.
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“With interest rates falling in 2025 we should see construction lift, but it remains difficult to see how the Housing Accord target is going to be met.”
There were no signs in the statistics of an imminent and rapid lift in building activity: in the six months to December, builders started work on about 86,000 homes.
New home building approvals have picked up to more than 16,000 a month, separate ABS data shows. That is still below the theoretical 20,000 monthly average that would, again, be required to achieve the 1.2m target by mid-2029.
The Master Builders Australia CEO, Denita Wawn, said a lack of supply was the biggest barrier to easing housing costs.
Wawn said Labor and the Coalition were “neck and neck” when it came to policies aimed at making homes more affordable.
“We are far from the finish line. Both have work to do if they want to complete the jigsaw puzzle that is our national housing crisis,” she said.
“Fixing supply constraints, delivering more shovel-ready land, investing in enabling infrastructure and skills, reducing red tape, and supporting innovation across the industry – these are the levers we must pull if we want to meet demand.”
