Interview with Matt Shirvington, Sunrise

Event: Interview with Matt Shirvington, Sunrise

Date: 8 September 2026 7.15am AEST
Speakers: Denita Wawn, Master Builders Australia CEO

Topics: Workforce Blueprint, almost a million construction workers short by 2035, state of the industry

E&OE

Matt Shirvington, Sunrise host: New data out this morning has revealed the extent of Australia’s property and construction crisis, with the country set to face a shortfall of almost 1 million tradies over the next decade if the Government doesn’t act now to ramp up supply. It comes as one of Australia’s biggest housing developers collapses, leaving almost a fifth of New South Wales’ new homes half built. For more, we’re joined by Denita Wawn, CEO at Master Builders Australia. Good to have you with us again. So, we need more tradies, but more than half of our apprentices don’t even finish their training. How do we fix that?

Denita Wawn, Master Builders Australia CEO: Well, first and foremost, we need more supports for apprentices in the system, and that includes additional funding for not only them but their employers as well. We need to ensure that we get completion rates much much higher than they are now, but we also need to attract more people into the industry. We’re simply not getting enough apprentices, and so we want to ensure that we’re attracting not only the traditional boys but we also need more women in the industry as well to really focus on a vocational education and training pathway into our sector.

Host: Let’s talk about skilled workers from overseas. You’ve been pushing for migration of those tradies to come in. How much pushback, though, are you getting from the unions here in Australia?

Denita: Well, unfortunately, the CFMEU was quite anti-skilled migration for a long period of time. Now that they are in Administration, we are hoping that they are more open-minded. If we are going to build the houses, the schools, the roads, the hospitals that we need across the country, we need more people in our industry. Of course, we need to focus on domestic solutions, but it’s not going to fill that gap. 140,000 odd we are now short, but as you say, up to nearly a million if we don’t resolve the problem in the next 10 years. So, for us, we’ve got domestic solutions on the table, but equally skilled migration as well.

Host: I kind of touched on one of the biggest developers of new homes, Bathla Group, has just collapsed. How concerning is that with potentially up to 15,000 dwellings in the pipeline for them alone?

Denita: This, of course, is devastating for anyone impacted by this situation. I don’t know the specific details, but if we look more broadly to the industry at large, we’ve had construction costs go up by 50 per cent over the last five years, and so when you’re quoting for work that is going to be built in two years’ time, it is very very hard to make the numbers stack up and still make a profit out of it. So, we’re really concerned with any builders that are quoting at the moment, not knowing what those increases are going to continually face over the next few years, which makes it very impossible to run a business.

Host: Yeah, it’s tough out there at the moment, isn’t it? Denita, really appreciate you coming in, giving us an update. Thank you.

Denita: Thank you.

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

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