Interview with Leon Delaney, 2CC Radio

Event: Interview with Leon Delaney, 2CC Radio

Date: 28 July 2026, 4.20pm AEST
Speakers: Melissa Bryne, Master Builders Australia National Director of Policy and Legal

Topics: Productivity Commission’s interim findings on housing supply regulation

E&OE

Leon Delaney, 2CC Radio host: The Productivity Commission has delivered interim findings on housing supply regulation, and it’s got some interesting things to say. National Director of Policy and Legal at the Master Builders Association of Australia, Melissa Byrne. Good afternoon.

Melissa Bryne, Master Builders Australia National Director of Policy and Legal: Good afternoon.

Host: Thanks for joining us today. The Productivity Commission seems to have hit the nail on the head, if you’ll forgive the pun, when it says that we’re not building enough homes in the areas where people want to live, and there are too many rules preventing us from building enough of them. The report has a lot to say, doesn’t it?

Melissa: It does, and for us, there’s no surprises in there at all, and basically, it’s just another message that we need to get back to a pro-supply agenda. We need to build more homes.

Host: Okay, how do we go about doing that? The Productivity Commission says we need to do things like approving three-storey homes everywhere. No zoning restrictions of any kind. We need to build the homes that people want where they want them, and we need to cut the cost of red tape and compliance costs, which, of course, have grown extraordinarily over the last few decades.

Melissa: Absolutely, and I think, as you said, they’ve hit the nail on the head. Excessive regulation, poor planning outcomes, inconsistent decision making, infrastructure bottlenecks. I mean, the list goes on of all of the things that are standing in the way of us delivering the homes that people need and where they want them to be as well.

Host: That’s an important part, isn’t it? Because often we’ll see large developments of single bedroom apartments or whatever in a particular location, and then they sit on the market. Nobody buys them. While at the same time, there are plenty of families out there looking for a three- or four-bedroom option, and they can’t find one.

Melissa: Yeah, I think the key part of that is a mix of housing. We need diversity. People want choice, so there’s no point building the same of one thing in the same area. We need to make sure that Australians have diversity in their housing mix, and that there’s a choice depending on where you are in your life and at what financial point you are as well. And so, making sure we’ve got a diverse housing mix is really important.

Host: One of the points that the Master Builders has seized upon is better coordinating infrastructure delivery, and this is something that’s come up a bit in discussion recently. It’s the necessary community infrastructure that enables housing development, things like new roads, new utilities delivery, that sort of thing. What more needs to be done on that front?

Melissa: Well, that enabling infrastructure is critical because nobody wants to live anywhere, and no one’s going to build any homes that aren’t being serviced properly. With, as you say, the roads, the water, the utilities, and the services that we need. So there’s a need for a more coordinated approach. There’s a need for better planning in terms of where that infrastructure is going to be delivered, so that those building the homes can make decisions about the best places to build.

Host: And on that, in connection with that, of course, there’s the developer contributions. Now, this is controversial and has been for a long time, because more and more as the years have gone by, developers have had to pony up more up front for things, including those infrastructure delivery items, and that ultimately has to be added to the end cost for the consumer. Now, many of those items were originally funded by local governments, but local governments have got no money left either, which is why they’ve had to impose these developer contribution frameworks. How can those be streamlined, simplified, or even removed altogether?

Melissa: So, it’s a big issue, isn’t it. And as you say, it is critical to getting these developments off the ground. So, one of the key complaints we get from members is, as you say, all of these costs being due upfront before the developer or the builder receives any sort of finance or cost reimbursement from a from client or a homeowner. So, one solution is to make those contributions match the delivery of the project, rather than having them all due in one lump sum up front. I think that’s a pretty simple and reasonable way to apportion those costs. Equally, Government could come to the party and stump up some funding support. I mean, the Federal Government’s got some money on the table for some enabling infrastructure, but we think that needs to be more. Before the last Federal Budget, we were asking for that to be about $5 billion, where the government’s committed to $2 billion. So, I think there’s a number of really simple, straightforward solutions that could help ease the burden in terms of delivering that enabling infrastructure that we need.

Host: Now, of course, around Australia, median house prices pushing towards a million dollars, and in many areas, well above the million dollars. So, if we use a million dollars as a benchmark, which is a crazy thing to say, considering how much I paid for my first house 1000 years ago, but if you take that as a benchmark, how much of that million dollars is actually disappearing in government fees, charges, and other impositions of that nature?

Melissa: Yeah, well, there’s figures floating around between sort of 40 and 50 per cent in terms of government fees, charges, and taxes. We’ve also got the Productivity Commission as well, who said that about $320,000 of the cost of a house is comprised of red tape and regulation. So certainly, a significant portion of that million-dollar home or that million-dollar cost is being eaten up by regulation, government fees and charges and taxes.

Host: Trying to remember what we spent on that first house, but I think it was about well, you know, it was about $78,000 or something like that. So, consider $300,000 just going in taxes and charges. That’s a highway extortion, isn’t it?

Melissa: Yeah, we’ve certainly reached another threshold in terms of the cost of homes and the cost of land as well. So, at the moment, as we all know, things just aren’t stacking up. And so, we really need governments at all levels to come to the party to reduce the barriers to delivering housing… and there’s some really good suggestions in this productivity commission report.

Host: Fantastic, Melissa. Thanks very much for chatting today.

Melissa: Thank you so much.

Host: Thank you, Melissa Bryne, the National Director of Policy and Legal at the Master Builders Association of Australia.

Media contact: Dylan Hafey, Adviser, Media & Government Relations

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