Interview with Rory McClaren, ABC Radio Adelaide

Event: Interview with Rory McClaren, ABC Radio Adelaide

Date: 11 September 2026 9.35am AEST
Speakers: Denita Wawn, Master Builders Australia CEO

Topics: Federal Budget modelling including supply/ rent impact of SMSF change, Workforce Blueprint, workforce shortages

E&OE

Rory McClaren, ABC Radio Adelaide host: I want to go now to Denita Wawn, who is the CEO of the Master Builders Association nationally. We often hear from Will Frogley , who’s the local lead in South Australia. Denita, welcome.

Denita Wawn, Master Builders Australia CEO: Good morning.

Host: Why has your organisation commissioned this particular piece of work?

Denita: Yeah, Master Builders with HIA and a couple of other property groups wanted to get a clarity of the impact of the Federal Budget announcements. So, what we saw in the Federal Budget were changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax when it comes to property investment. But then, with the deal with the Greens, there were additional measures, and that was in relation to stopping loans being provided to self-managed super funds for residential investments. So, we wanted to see the cumulative impact of those announcements and so the report that we’ve released today shows that the compounding impact of all of those measures means that we will see a decline in the supply of homes for rent by over 10,000 over four years, and concerningly, an increase in rents of around $10 per week. This is an increase from our original modeling of $9, and the Government said that it should only be around about $2 per week. So, we wanted to get clarity of what we’re anticipating in the future to then say to Government this is far more extreme than you purported during the Federal Budget announcements. We’re seeing already difficulties in the market, and we should not be pitting renters against first homeowners. We should instead be focusing on increasing supply across the spectrum of all housing.

Host: Because Denita, there would be people out here listening to what you’ve put forward there, questioning why these tax changes would actually lead to fewer homes being built.

Denita: Yeah, there’s understandably contention because the Government did say that they were going to keep capital gains tax and negative gearing tax benefits to investors in the housing market for new homes, but not old homes. But the market doesn’t work that simply, and the Government’s own figures said that there would be a reduction in the supply of homes as a consequence of these tax hikes, so what we find is that investors say there is no reason to stay in the residential property market. We’re going to vacate this as an asset class, and as such, we’re just not going to invest in it, and we’ll invest in shares or whatever else. And of course, we need to focus on home ownership. That is a dream for all Australians. But we know, as your previous commentator said, a third of Australians do rent, and we need to ensure that we have a buoyant rental market and a good supply of rental properties. And the more you constrain the supply of rental properties, the higher the rents arise, and of course, how on earth can you then save for a deposit as a first homeowner if your rents are escalating? So, we say the Government has created an unnecessary stress in the rental market, and as such, should be reversing these decisions because we’re seeing it play out already.

Host: Denita, what do you say to people such as those on the text line, who argue that these reforms, what they are actually trying to do, is level the playing field between investors and first home buyers?

Denita: Well, we say unfortunately that that is all good intent, but the reality is far from that. We need to ensure that we have a substantial supply of homes for all Australians at an affordable price. That means we actually need to remove the barriers of supply and why construction costs, for example, have gone up by 50 per cent over the last five years. So, for example, we don’t have enough enabling infrastructure, as one of your callers said, which means the cost of land that is build ready is escalating. We don’t have enough builders, and we don’t have enough tradies. That means the price of securing labour is much higher than it perhaps otherwise should be, and we’re also seeing significant delays in being able to build in the first instance. And so, your holding costs are greater. So, our focus is around decreasing the escalation of costs to enable people to invest more, so you get more supply. It’s that simple. We should not be taking away investors out of the housing market, regardless of whether they’re first homeowners, owner occupiers, or investors for the rental market.

Host: Denita, did this particular piece of research look at the impact on skills and workforce? Because this is an issue that we have very much spoken about on this program before with Will Frogley, obviously the local CEO here of the MBA.

Denita: Master Builders Australia released a piece of work called the Workforce Blueprint on Monday of this week. We have identified that we are short currently 140,000 workers around the country, that will escalate by 85,000 every year, until such time as there is greater focus on providing domestic solutions to our skill shortages. We need more money into apprentices. We need more support for employers who are providing employment for apprentices. We need support for our group training organisations that do such a fantastic job. And of course, on top of that, we should be looking at greater focus on skilled migration, which I know your Premier has talked about this week as well. We need to get that focus.

Host: Because we heard from Will Frogley yesterday, you know talking about this on Drive with Nikolai Beilharz. But give us some national perspective here when it comes to your organisation’s take on migration and migration levels.

Denita: Well, our view is that we simply have not focused enough on skilled migration and the right skills that we need in this country to ensure our economy is going gangbusters, we know that with the decline in the number of skilled tradies coming into this country over the last decade has meant that we’ve been significantly short. If you look at, for example, our 140,000 odd workers shortage, we’re not going to meet that by domestic solutions alone. So, we’ve said we need a greater priority of skilled tradies. We need to look at things such as international students being available to do apprenticeships rather than university courses in areas that we simply have a plethora of people already in having those skills, we need to look at expanding the Pacific Island Workers Scheme as well to building and construction. So, the solutions are there to Government around skilled migration. The solutions are there to apprenticeships. We just need Government to actually harness the attention in the right spaces of migration, rather than having a bigger debate about the actual numbers coming into the country at any one given time.

Host: Denita, thank you.

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

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