Thanks go to AHURI for organising another thought provoking national housing conference in Brisbane. Based on sessions we attended here is our take on some of what we heard.
The Housing Minister, the Hon Julie Collins MP used her address to showcase the ALP’s current housing program, noting it aspires to ‘transform’ housing in Australia. The HAFF was described as ‘a secure ongoing pipeline of funding’. Hopefully this signals a future intention to add further dollars so that it continues to fund units beyond the initial 30,000 homes.
The Minister also laid out an ambitious agenda for the National Housing and Homelessness Plan stating that it needs to ‘be inclusive’, ‘drive real change over the next decade’ and ‘set a vision of Australia’s housing.’
In her plenary, Susan Lloyd Hurwitz, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Interim Chair emphasised that housing pressures were primarily due to lack of supply and noted the challenges were diagnosed 15 years ago and remained unchanged.
She acknowledged that for better or worse Australia had not accepted renting as a long term option in contrast to countries such as Switzerland where only 34% are owner occupiers. Thus, policy settings – including retirement incomes – are predicated on retiring workers owning homes outright at a time when, in fact, increasing numbers of households are likely to be lifelong renters. Amongst possible solutions she emphasised encouraging institutional investment in market BTR, modest increases in density in middle ring suburbs, and planning processes that support more supply – quoting the New Zealand Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) policy. Now under threat from the new government, the policy has perhaps had most success in containing sprawl, rather than increasing overall supply. She also hoped there could be a mature conversation about tax settings to support more affordable housing.
Chaired by Liz de Chastel, ALGA the session on ‘Building the role of local government’ focused on what is being achieved on the ground. Also, it was good to hear from Humair Ahmad about the NSW Government’s facilitation services to help cash strapped Councils give effect to their housing ambitions, including offering ‘End to end delivery processes’comprising tendering for CHO partners, setting leverage targets, contracting, and advice on reporting supply and tenant outcomes, as well as facilitating and overseeing affordable housing delivery projects.
In the session ‘Embedding voices of lived experience in policy making’ we heard from Daniel Robertson, a long time resident of Common Ground Queensland explaining how tenants had helped put the ‘the community into community housing’. Linda Hahn from the Housing Older Women’s Network shared how her experiences had motivated her to advocacy on behalf of others, the growth of the movement and the recent successful delegation to Parliament.
The need for a rapid decarbonisation of Australia’s housing sector was tackled by Prof Ralph Horne lead author on Informing a strategy for circular economy housing in Australia. Great discussion with Alison Scotland CEO at ASBEC and Sorcha Edwards, Housing Europe about moving towards less carbon intensive building techniques and more recycling of building materials.
And outside the main event, it was good to catch up with colleagues for the New Zealand national housing agency – Kāinga Ora – much to share and an agreement to continue the cross Tasman dialogue.
