The Federal Budget fails to deliver promised supply turbocharge

12 May 2026

The test for this Budget has been simple: does it increase or decrease Australia’s housing supply and construction activity? Tonight we got our answer. By Treasury’s own estimate, the new restrictions on Negative Gearing and Capital Gains Tax (CGT) will deprive us of 35,000 new homes over the next decade.

While some new measures have been welcomed by builders, Master Builders Australia CEO Denita Wawn said that the budget has not delivered on the Federal Government’s commitment to materially increase new housing supply to its full potential.

“The Government’s broken promises on CGT and Negative Gearing dilutes many of the positive features of tonight’s federal budget. The opportunity that exists to turbocharge housing supply has been lost.

“Leading into tonight, the National Housing Accord is forecast to be over 200,000 homes short of target and building a new detached house is now 48.6 per cent more expensive than it was right before the pandemic,” said Ms Wawn.

Master Builders welcomes the following budget measures:

• The removing of the paywall around Australian Standards making those references across all legislation free, reducing the compliance cost burden for the industry.
• Support for skilled migration through:
• • faster skills assessments for migrant trades workers accelerating occupational licensing. The budget papers forecast that this would result in an additional 4000 skilled trades workers per year.

• • a new program of skills assessments for onshore visa holders, ensuring their existing qualifications and practical trade experience are recognised measures Master Builders have long called for

• • reforms to the permanent migration points test, to select better educated, higher-skilled and younger migrants overall

• Making the $20,000 instant asset write off permanent
• Further financial support for the administration of the CFMEU
• New enabling infastructure funding, which is expected to support up to 65,000 new homes.

“Workforce shortages remain one of the biggest constraints to delivering homes. The Budget doesn’t go far enough to address this.

“There is more work to do to make it easier to deliver the homes, infrastructure and buildings Australians rely on. Australia needs to see a material uplift in supply, and we will be undertaking modelling to understand and test the holistic effect of these budget measures,” said Ms Wawn.

Media contact: Dylan Hafey, Media Advisor

0497 330 064 | dylan.hafey@masterbuilders.com.au