Apartments or flats make up tiny share of country housing
Housing advocates and industry representatives have met in Canberra to thrash out some solutions for Australia’s housing crisis. The summit focussed more specifically on housing in regional areas where new home approvals continually lag behind population growth.
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TVTranscript
00:00 It's certainly been a situation where the regions can be easily overlooked in this debate
00:06 around the housing crisis in this country.
00:09 And it was great to get everyone together in a room.
00:12 We all know the solutions.
00:13 The question is how do we actually help each other get to fixing those problems.
00:19 And so what needs to happen in the regions?
00:22 Well it's simply all about supply.
00:24 And it's a supply of investment, a supply of build-ready land.
00:29 It's about skilled workers, not only for the building industry but also for councils.
00:34 We've got a significant shortage of planners and building surveyors that are critical in
00:39 terms of getting approval started in the first place.
00:41 So violent agreement in terms of where we need more people to get the building going.
00:47 Unfortunately we need all help from governments.
00:51 We acknowledge there is a National Cabinet decision to actually facilitate supply around
00:56 the country but we need to see more on the ground action.
00:59 That was the key message out of today.
01:02 And I'm noticing one of the stories about this today, there was talk about the first
01:04 high rise in Dubbo being established.
01:08 So what's been the move of more kind of medium density to high density housing in the regions?
01:15 And is there any pushback in the regions against that?
01:20 Certainly the sentiment today was we need to get the dwelling mix right.
01:24 We need to get the right amount of housing in the right places.
01:28 And certainly there is a recognition, particularly to attract professionals into towns and cities
01:33 in the regions, that we need to look at one, two bedroom units and also the detached houses
01:41 as well as townhouses as well.
01:43 So we need a mix.
01:44 But certainly there is a recognition that high rise in certain areas will need to be
01:49 part of that.
01:50 We just need to get the investment mix right in the first place to ensure that they actually
01:55 are getting investment returns from such a building.
01:58 And was there any talk today about how you can address those supply issues that you mentioned
02:03 a couple of answers back?
02:05 Well, certainly we know we need to encourage more people into the professions that we have
02:11 shortages of.
02:12 We need to encourage them into the regions.
02:14 And bizarrely enough, one of the issues around encouraging people is there's not enough housing.
02:19 So it's a chicken and egg situation.
02:21 But also we know that skilled migration is critical.
02:25 The federal government has addressed that in their skilled migration report last year.
02:30 We'd like them to go a little bit more and also not only recognise professionals, but
02:34 also high paid, trade qualified people as well.
02:38 But they're stepping in the right direction.
02:40 We just need more.
02:41 And did any ministers attend today?
02:43 And did you get any commitments from them?
02:46 We certainly had a message from the housing minister.
02:48 We had the shadow housing minister.
02:50 We had a number of state ministers there and a number of local government councillors as
02:54 well.
02:55 So it's a really good mix of representation from government.
02:59 I think we're all in agreement, as I said, around supply is the answer.
03:03 We just need to be helping each other actually address those issues, get the money where
03:08 we need it and ensure that we are supporting in terms of those desperately need resourcing.
03:14 One of the biggest things that seemed to be discussed today was around flying squads of
03:18 surveyors and planners onto the smaller regions where they simply cannot afford to get those
03:24 experts on the ground and get those planning approvals and building approvals ticked off
03:28 and ready to go.
03:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]