Interview with Stephen Cenatiempo, 2CC Radio Canberra

Event: Interview with Stephen Cenatiempo, 2CC Radio Canberra
Date: 31 October 2024, 7.55am AEDT
Speakers: Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia
Topics: HomeBuilder Program, housing supply shortage

E&OE

Stephen Cenatiempo, 2CC Radio Canberra: It’s six minutes to eight o’clock. The – I call it a sham – COVID inquiry, what we needed was a full Royal Commission into the response to COVID. We didn’t get that. We got a politically motivated campaign that was designed to just point the finger at the previous government. We’ve already got the current government out there suggesting that the previous government’s spending was responsible for all the inflation problems we’re going through at the moment. What they failed to say is they supported every single cent of that spending, and in fact, wanted the government to spend more. But they’ve particularly taken aim at the HomeBuilder program and are suggesting that is responsible for the underlying inflation problem, but quite rightly, Master Builders Australia, say it was the right policy at the time and shouldn’t become the scapegoat for systemic housing challenges. Denita Wawn is the CEO of Master Builders and joins us now. Denita, good morning.

Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia: Good morning, Stephen.

Stephen: We all know that to keep any economy ticking over, you need to keep the building and construction industry going. It seems like a no-brainer that you would do something like this in the situation we were in back then?

Denita: Absolutely. I can recall the days where I was literally getting calls minute by minute from builders around the country saying contracts are being cancelled, left, right and centre, there is no work to be done. You know, the simple fact was, people thought they were going to lose their jobs, the economy was going to go in recession, and of course, they weren’t going to spend any money on a new home. And so, as a consequence, like every government in the past, to use building and construction as a stimulus measure, and it’s interesting in that there were huge opponents to the top at the time saying it was not enough and the government should be shelling out more. So, it seems quite incredulous that now was there’s a reversal of history happening at somebody’s convenience.

Stephen: So, are you able to quantify the impact that HomeBuilder actually had on the construction industry and what um, what, I guess, prevention of loss it caused?

Denita: Well, we believe that it kept around about, you know, about a half, at least a half of our workforce in the country working at a time no one else was. And it kept the economy going. Every dollar spent in building and construction means three dollars back into the economy. It was crucial to get us through and to stave off a recession. So as such, it was critical, critical for employment as well as critical for the economy generally. And interestingly enough, both treasury and our figures suggested that the stimulus would create anywhere between 35-to-40,000 new homes. Interestingly, it was a roaring success. In the end it got to about 140,000 new homes, simply because people real didn’t actually, in the end, lose their jobs, and they had money to spend because they were bored in their own homes. So it was very, very successful and certainly exceeded expectations.

Stephen: It’s interesting that you say it shouldn’t become – and the terminology “shouldn’t become a scapegoat,” it’s interesting, the systemic housing short- housing shortage, is real now, because if those 140,000 homes hadn’t been built, we’d be so far, even further behind the eight ball than we are.

Denita: That’s right, we had an ongoing decline in housing being built pre-COVID. We then had a spike during COVID because of HomeBuilder. Then, of course, it’s declined again over the last couple of years. We’re consistently building anywhere between 150 to 180,000 homes in the country each year, during COVID, it was over 200,000 and if we want to reach the home targets we know we need, we should be building 240,000 homes a year. So we’re well short of it, and there are systemic problems as a consequence. And it’s got nothing to do with HomeBuilder. It’s about labour shortages, particularly in trades. It’s about the shortage of people generally within the building supply chain, approval processes, planning, zoning, you name it, but it is certainly not as a result of COVID.

Stephen: Yeah, I mean the basic, basic mathematics spells that out, doesn’t it? Denita thanks for your time this morning.

Denita: Pleasure as always, thank you Stephen.

Stephen: Denita Wawn, the CEO of Master Builders Association.

Media contact:
Dee Zegarac
National Director, Media & Public Affairs
0400 493 071
dee.zegarac@masterbuilders.com.au