- No products in the cart.
Event: Interview with Stephen Cenatiempo, 2CC
Date: 18 February 2025, 7:25am AEDT
Speakers: Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia
Topics: Productivity Commission Report; Housing Crisis; Skills Shortages
E&OE
Stephen Cenatiempo, host 2CC: The Productivity Commission has supported calls by Master Builders Australia and other building organisations to reform the industry if we want to get housing going. The review called Housing Construction Productivity: Can we fix it? To talk to us about this, Denita Wawn is the CEO of Master Builders Australia. Denita, good morning.
Denita Wawn, CEO Master Builders Australia: Good morning, Stephen.
Stephen: Can we fix it?
Denita: We can. We know what the issues are. We know how to resolve it. We just need the political will to be able to do it, and also the resourcing to do it. But if we continue the way we are, we are going to continue to have an escalating housing crisis in this country. It’s as simple as that.
Stephen: The problem I see here, and you and I have had this discussion before, is the government, the federal government, keeps talking a big game about committing, you know, this many millions of dollars to constructing new houses. They’ve now come out and copied the Coalition’s policy of banning foreign investment in existing residential property. But none of that builds a single, an extra home unless we can get the road blocks out of the way.
Denita: That’s absolutely right. If you simply have demand driven levers, whether it’s government spending or private spending, it only exacerbates the problem. We’ve known for years that we need to resolve supply constraints. That includes, you know, the myriad of red tape issues that are restricting and making things time consuming. It’s about supply people. It’s about ensuring that we have the right staff, not only within the building industry, but also at government level. And the list continues. And so we’ve got to get our policies right.
Stephen: So, I guess the problem is, though that, and we’ve seen New South Wales make some inroads. Here in the ACT, we have all sorts of different roadblocks that create problems left, right and centre. What are other jurisdictions doing? And can the federal government actually put any pressure on the states and territories? Because, I mean, largely, that’s where the roadblocks are. States and territories and local government are the hold ups here. What can the federal government do?
Denita: Well, first and foremost, I’m old enough to remember the Hilmer reforms of the 1990s where the federal government actually incentivised state governments to ensure that they actually made fundamental change to regulation. It was a significant shift in the how the country was regulated. We have consistently called for a similar process. Government already has their capacity to influence territory or state government spending when it comes to the billions of dollars that they hand out in terms of infrastructure, the list goes on. So 70 per cent of Australians, we’ve just recently researched, actually think it’s the federal government’s responsibility to stand up and put some leadership into this space. That they’ve got to corral the state governments and the local government to get their act together. But equally, we’ve got to hold state governments to account, and we’ve also got to provide greater resources to local councils.
Stephen: Do we need to, does the federal government perhaps need to get directly involved in this like it has in the past, and launch federal government housing programs? Whether it be releasing Commonwealth land under their own steam and bypassing the states and territories and local government, which I guess, almost creates a competition for those states and territories to lift their game, doesn’t it?
Denita: Stephen, I love the concept of competitive federalism, and certainly we have called for a huge, long, long time for the release of any government land, whether it is federal, state or local. There is a huge swathe of land there. But of course, once you get the land, it actually takes, unfortunately, too much time to get development approvals, to get the civil infrastructure there, in terms of utilities. We then have to get planning approvals, and then you’ve got to find the people actually to build everything. So we’ve got to realise that just because you might find a lot of land, that is not build ready, and as a consequence, we need to look at all aspects of why we have bottlenecks currently in the system.
Stephen: But surely the federal government could overcome that just by saying, well, look, we’re going to release this land. We’re release this land. We’re going to make it, you know, shovel ready effectively. If a developer wants to come along and develop it, they don’t have to deal with the states and local government. They can come straight to us.
Denita: No, that’s right, but they’ve still got to have utilities. We know that `for example, we’ve had stories of waiting for Sydney Water connections for two or three years. You know, electricity taking forever. There are stranded assets in our outer suburbs of all our major capital cities where houses are being built but they don’t have sewerage, or they don’t have appropriate roads in and out of that suburb, the list goes on. So you know, this requires a concerted effort. If we want new homes for people, they can’t be surrounded in the middle of nowhere. They’ve got to have the appropriate utilities and transport infrastructure around it, and that’s why it needs a concerted effort of all three levels of government.
Stephen: Denita, you talked about constraints, employment constraints. Are we making any progress there? I mean, I know Master Builders and the Housing Industry Association and various other groups do as much as they can to promote more apprentices and the like. But what are we doing to actually increase our workforce?
Denita: Well, first and foremost, we need the school system to recognise the fantastic opportunities of vocational education and training. It’s as simple as that. Schools still focus too much of their attention on ATARs and getting into university. We say it’s much better to be paid to train than get a huge HECS debt in an industry where you know you’ll be a [inaudible] for a job afterwards. So we’re encouraging governments to continue to put more money into vocational education and training. We’re encouraging the Education Minister to look at more aspects of career guidance around VET. And with that, yesterday, we actually launched a guide Construct Your Career that actually outlines every single job in the sector, what you need to do, and it’s specifically written for secondary school aged kids. So, we’ll be sending that out to every secondary school in Australia.
Stephen: Denita, good to talk to you this morning.
Denita: Pleasure, thank you as always Stephen.
Media contact:
Dee Zegarac
National Director, Media & Public Affairs
0400 493 071
dee.zegarac@masterbuilders.com.au