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Event: Interview with Ellen Fanning, ABC Brisbane Radio
Date: 4 March 2026, 5.30pm AEDT
Speakers: Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia
Topics: Building approvals, labour shortage, apprenticeship pathways
E&OE
Ellen Fanning, ABC Brisbane Radio host: It takes almost two months more to build a house now than it did a decade ago and if you think that’s bad, it takes almost a year longer to build an apartment for heaven’s sakes. Prices have gone through the roof. New houses are 55 per cent more expensive than they were a decade ago. The cost of home renos is up 42 per cent, is it possible to turn back the clock? Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Wawn with you now. You released some data yesterday, Denita showing building approvals at their weakest since June last year, actually down 7.2 per cent. We’re going backwards, why?
Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia: It’s unfortunately, Ellen all about the cost of construction, and people wanting to build, but they can’t afford to build because it’s just too expensive. So, you’ve reflected those startling statistics and it’s a range of reasons. We’ve got difficulty in accessing build ready land. We’ve got major problems in getting enabling infrastructure right. We have a massive supply shortage of skilled workers. Build Skills Australia is estimated that we need an additional 115,000 extra workers just to build the housing needs of Australians. That doesn’t include, of course, all the work required for the Olympics, new railways and so forth. It also is because of the time constraints that we have when we’re dealing with restrictive enterprise agreements with the CFMEU and the list goes on. So, there are massive impediments that are causing massive cost increases, and it’s slowing us down, and people are not wanting to open their wallets to invest in building and construction.
Host: A lot of hope in order to get the housing we need built has been put on higher density. Let’s just build higher density, that’ll solve the problem and that’s where this data is really alarming, an absolute collapse in higher density approval numbers. Take me through that.
Denita: Yeah, it’s pretty huge, isn’t it, to see a significant decline of nearly 20 per cent in those approval numbers and for us, this is alarming. If we are going to meet the target of 1.2 million homes over five years that was set by the Federal Government, that was agreed to by state and territory governments, we need to be building about 50 per cent of our housing stock in high rise, and at the moment, it’s sitting on around about 35 per cent and the concern we have that it’s dwindling, as opposed to increasing.
Host: Yeah, the figures really tell the story, a 21 per cent reduction in higher density home building approval since June, and if you take it across the 12 months, the number of higher density home buildings being approved is down 41.5 per cent. So, your members are just going “not doing that”, “not even attempting to do that”, “not even applying to do that, let alone doing it”.
Denita: That’s right and we see time and time again, investors wanting to invest in high rise density. They know the demand is there, but simply the cost and the risk doesn’t stack up for the price that people are willing to pay and we’re already seeing housing affordability out of reach for so many but it is getting worse because people are not willing to invest at a loss in the current cycle.
Host: You can do the sums. You can find the block of land. You can get your engineers and your architects to build it and do all their glossy brochures and all the rest of it, but by the time you price it all so that you don’t go broke, there’s not any people willing to pay that amount of money for that unit. Is that the bottom line?
Denita: That is the bottom line, absolutely spot on, and this is the problem. We have people willing to enter into the market. They can’t afford to do so. They’ve got certain price points, particularly when we look at interest rates at the level they are, the likelihood of an interest rate increase yet again this year and people are going, it is too high risk and the investor and the builder is saying it is too high risk to put investment into this property and speculate that it may or may not be bought. That is the problem we are facing. It is a no-win situation for either investors, builders or buyers.
Host: It’d help if they sped up a bit surely. You know, a decade ago, it took 8.6 months to complete a typical detached house. The build time is now 11.5 months. That’s got to make things more expensive. Could you just start with that? Get a bit of a hurry on.
Denita: Absolutely and the biggest problem is twofold. It’s about lack of people. So, if you think about building a detached home, you have something like 40 different subcontracting trades that come in to complete that home from the word go. If you cannot sequence them, every single day, then that is why you get those time blowouts and of course, time in our industry is money. So, we can get more people working in the industry where you are literally seeing activity on a building site, day in, day out, then you will see those time frames contract. Equally when you look at high rise density, the blowout and the times, in part because of a skill shortage, but it’s also about in many instances, when you’re dealing with CFMEU pattern agreements, there are a range of productivity sapping measures that find that instead of working five or five and a half days a week, there’s only activity for about three days a week. Now, we commend the new Administration of the CFMEU to try and change some of that, but we need to see a change of those provisions in those agreements to have greater productivity outcomes.
Host: Okay, let’s think a bit about apprentices. You know, they’re not staying around, half don’t finish their apprenticeship. I’ve been speaking in preparation for a special program, Queensland wide program we’re doing next Wednesday at 4pm Denita, about how many young people are not in education, employment and training, and it’s over 10 per cent in Queensland of kids aged from, I don’t know, 16 to 24 who are in that category. They’re just disengaged entirely. Do we need to do it differently? The pay is so low they spend the first year of their apprenticeship sweeping the floor and trying to get to work on time. Is there a way to supercharge the TAFE element of what they’re doing for the first four or six months of their apprenticeship so that they hit the ground with some skills that can be rewarded with higher pay? Do we need to really push into looking at matters like that?
Denita: There definitely needs to be improvements in apprenticeships. Certainly, from an MBA perspective, we are big believers in school-based apprenticeship programs. That is where they can do two days of their apprenticeship while they’re still completing years 11 and 12, and that gets them in a far better place by the time they have completed year 12. We are not seeing a significant uplift in that pathway. We also have difficulty in attracting 100% of the potential workforce. We are still seeing stubborn reluctance from women to enter into trades. It is still only 4% of our workforce are females in trade qualifications. It is a work that we’re doing through our Building Women’s Careers program, ‘Level the Site’, in ensuring that we have the appropriate culture to attract women. But we are not doing enough in our schools. We are not educating the parents, and we’re not supporting our employers to make sure that we are encouraging people into apprentices. I keep on saying, Ellen, you know, AI is not taking over building and construction anytime soon and so when you look at the amount of demand for our buildings, there are huge career opportunities, but we are not good at selling that story.
Host: Yeah well, we’re going to give it a go next Wednesday, talking about how so many Queensland young people are what we call the jobless generation and what sorts of opportunities and barriers there are to try and break down to get the best for that group of people and also for the industry and the housing we need. Denita, great to chat to you as always.
Denita: Thank you so much.
Host: Master Builders Australia CEO, Denita Wawn.
Media contact: Dylan Hafey, Media Advisor
0497 330 064 | dylan.hafey@masterbuilders.com.au