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Event: Interview with Ash Gillon Sky News
Date: 19 October 2024
Speakers: Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia
Topics: Coalition housing policy announcement
E&OE
Ash Gillon, host Sky News: Joining me in the studio is the Masters Builders CEO, Denita Wawn. Denita, thank you for coming to the studio, appreciate you making the time for us. Tell us what this would mean for people out there thinking, “Oh, I’d really like to build my first home,” to point out to our viewers you were there alongside Peter Dutton today, the Master Builders has obviously had some input into the crafting of this policy. So, why do you think it makes so much sense?
Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia: Well, there is a housing crisis in this country, and it’s all about supply or the lack thereof. And there are three or four components as to the reason why. And one of the big components is the fact that we can’t get our land build-ready for the homes. We need a significant influx of money into our sewers, our water, our electricity and so forth. We know there are huge developments sitting on shelves at the moment because they simply cannot get the funding to start that civil works. So for us, we asked for a large spend on infrastructure. Certainly the federal government has got half a, half a billion dollars, but the opposition have gone to $5 billion which will make a significant shift for those Greenfield developments, for us to be able to then build those homes.
Ash: The Labor Government points out they do have plans underway, they’ve got their own infrastructure fund. In this policy space is it good for the sector to have policies chopping and changing? These are obviously projects that take many years often.
Denita: Yeah, we know that we need an awful lot of homes. We’re supportive of the government’s 1.2 million homes over five years. Why? Because we know we need that many to build enough homes for all Australians. We have a supply crisis here. The reason why we have the supply crisis is because land is not build ready, we don’t have enough workforce. We have zoning problems. We have planning approval problems. So for this, this is a big shift for us as the industry. Nevertheless, we’ll be asking both of the major parties, into the lead up to the election, that you need to do more, particularly about workforce, about capacity, and also putting some pressure on the state and territory governments to get their zoning right, their planning right, and, of course, their approval process right as well. It is really creating a significant barrier to us being able to build enough homes.
Ash: You’ve talked about land and the workforce issues, why is it so expensive to build anything in this country at the moment? What is feeding into that?
Denita: Well, a big issue at the moment, of course, has been inflation. We saw at large cost escalations during covid, that has continued, but we simply do not have enough people, which means it costs more, it takes longer to build, and therefore costs escalate. We also have significant increases in terms of those input costs around consultants, about planning, about infrastructure. We also have increases with new changes constantly to the National Construction Code. And that was another announcement by the coalition today, to put a pause on the National Construction Code. It has added a cost of anywhere between $20-to-50,000 per home with the changes that were made in 2022 so it’s important that we realize there are a lot of inputs into making housing more affordable in this country, and we need all governments to be working collaboratively together. And we would hope that housing will be a central theme of this election, and that industry’s voice is heard.
Ash: The housing election, perhaps?
Denita: Perhaps. That’s what we would like to say.
Ash: Denita, really appreciate you coming in and having chat with us. Thanks so much.
Denita: Thank you.
Media contact:
Dee Zegarac
National Director, Media & Public Affairs
0400 493 071
dee.zegarac@masterbuilders.com.au