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Event: Interview with James Willis, 2GB Money News
Date: 19 January 2026, 7.35pm AEDT
Speakers: Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia
Topics: Skilled migration, National Housing Accord, apprenticeships and building and construction cost increases.
E&OE
James Willis, host 2GB Money News: Welcome back to Money News. My name is James Willis, great to have your company for 2026. Now it’s no secret that Australia needs more homes. We need them now, and the Albanese Government has set a target of 1.2 million new homes over the next five years. Some would call that ambitious, others would call it crazy, but more and more experts are saying it is unachievable. I trust the people in the industry, rather than what we hear, largely from the public service. The cost of delivering this target has blown out by $3.8 billion over the past 12 months. Meanwhile, we’ve had builders and construction companies go broke. They’re also crying out for more workers, everything, the cost of materials, the cost of building houses is all going up, and Master Builders Australia have put out a report on all of this, and they’re saying that skilled migration is crucial to lifting housing supply and easing prices. They’re saying we need more workers, and don’t have enough here. Denita Warn is the CEO of Master Builders Australia. She’s on the line for us this morning, Denita, thanks for your time.
Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia: Hello. How are you?
Host: Thank you, and welcome to Money News. Before we go through a couple of solutions, it just feels that number just feels like an overwhelming task, 1.2 million homes over a five-year period. It’s no wonder so many people are saying it’s unachievable.
Denita: It’s a large number, but it’s a number we actually need to achieve to resolve the housing crisis in this country. It equates to around about 240,000 odd homes in each year. The last time we achieved that number Australia wide was in around 2012 and the important factor in that regard is 50% of the homes in that year were actually from high rise apartments, where, at the moment, only about 40% of our homes come from high rise. So, we’d need to see a significant uplift in high rise before we were able to achieve that number. So, it’s a tall ask, but equally, the community is demanding it, because we’ve simply got this massive shortage of homes around the country.
Host: So that’s an important point so people understand this, the only way you can really get there is to build up?
Denita: That’s absolutely right, unless we get our planning systems and our investment strategy right to build up, whether that is very high rise or medium density. And I know in the Sydney community there’s a lot of debate at the moment around medium density and high-rise building, particularly in our inner suburbs, then we will not achieve that feat.
Host: How many workers is your workforce short? And what kind of workers? What are the numbers that you’re aware of and in what trades?
Denita: It’s all trades. BuildSkills Australia, which is a government funded entity, has estimated that we need an additional 115,000 workers alone. That’s nearly just shy of 10% addition on our existing workforce to meet the housing demand alone. That doesn’t include commercial, civil building, about 90,000 of those are trade qualified people, and it’s across all trades. We’re got to remember there are about 40 odd different trades that build our home at any one given point in time. So, we are encouraging people to get into an apprenticeship. But equally, we know that we need more people from overseas to fill the gap that we’ve got.
Host: Well, that’s the question that people always ask when we talk about streamlining visa programs Denita. Do we not have enough young Aussies keen to take out apprentices? Is it too hard for them? Could more be done to sort of streamline the Australian apprenticeship program before we look overseas?
Denita: Yeah, we’re certainly looking at how we streamline it and make it easier. It’s a balance between making sure that people have got the appropriate qualifications that they are building, you know, compliant buildings that they’re doing so safely for not only their own regard, but also the end user. So, we’ve got to be cautious in how much streamlining you do with an apprenticeship but too much focus over the last couple of decades has been on university qualifications as opposed to doing a trade. And yet, I don’t know, I’ve always seen an awful lot of busy tradies, and there’s an awful lot of job opportunities out there. So, for recent school leavers looking to consider what they’re doing, then we’d argue that they should look at a trade. But if you look at skilled migration, we’re competing in the world for international talent. Many other countries, such as Canada and the UK, have specialist tradie pathway visas. We don’t. We make it really difficult. So, we’re asking for a specialist fast track tradie pathway but also we’ve suggested that the Pacific Island Workers Scheme could consider being expanded into our industry for non-licensed trades as well. So, there’s a lot of opportunities for skilled migration, we’re just not realising them at the moment.
Host: So, I guess that’s worth saying, because people always go, well, when we’re talking about these stories, why do we need workers from overseas? But what you’re saying is that even if we did a lot more to encourage people to get apprenticeships and move away from university and take up a trade, given this 1.2 million target in the next five years, the only way we can get there is through the visa program.
Denita: That’s right, and certainly, while we’d love to ensure that only our workforce for Australians, the reality has always been with the building construction industry, that we’ve been heavily reliant on migrants. Up until Covid, 20% of our workforce was migrants. In the last five years, only 5% of the new workforce are migrants, so we’re really falling short on migrants, and we know that there is stress in the system, and concerns by the community that if you bring too many migrants in, that it makes the housing crisis worse. We say that you’ve got to make sure that you’re focused on skilled migrants who can build these homes to alleviate the stresses in the housing system at the moment.
Host: You’re listening to Denita Warn. She’s the CEO of Master Builders Australia, on Money News. I mentioned the blowout in delivering this target, which has gone up by a few billion dollars in the last 12 months. What are the key factors that you keep hearing about on each project that have increased in terms of the cost of building an overall house, It’s materials, it’s labour, just go through those, if you can.
Denita: Absolutely we’ve seen, unfortunately, construction costs increase by over 45% in the last five years, and that doesn’t matter whether its government funded construction or private developers. That is predominantly due to shortage of labour, which means that the rate of labour is higher, and every day you see a building site empty means that it’s becoming more expensive. So, if you think about it, a detached home at the moment used to, pre-Covid, take around seven to nine months to build. That’s now blown out to more like 12 months to 14 months, so that means money. We also know material costs have increased, and we also know that it takes a long time for things to get approved by Councils and Government, and every time there is a delay, or there is a dispute about a building or a development, then more costs are added to it. So, that compounding factor of delay, shortage of labour, complicated regulation, the list goes on, cost of materials. All of that adds to the increased cost, and it means that there are less people willing to open up their wallets to build a new home. So, we’ve got a really difficult situation. The Government has got to pull a whole range of policy levers to fix this supply problem. The demand is there. It’s just that we have supply constraints that may mean people are not realising, you know, their Australian dream of owning their own home, or people building more rental properties, as the case may be.
Host: Yeah, meanwhile, we’ve just had Perth into the million-dollar club. That’s our sixth capital city to reach that milestone, quarterly growth of 9.9% in Perth, Denita, we really appreciate your time. Thank you.
Denita: Pleasure.
Media contact: Dylan Hafey, Media Advisor
0497 330 064 | dylan.hafey@masterbuilders.com.au