Tradies will be offered thousands of dollars to move to Western Australia from interstate to help ease labour shortages and drive down construction costs for homes. It comes as the Liberals proposed a 500-million-dollar infrastructure investment fund they say will help to boost the state’s housing supply by 100-thousand homes.
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00:00$10,000 to poach much-needed tradies from other states and New Zealand.
00:09Whether that subcontractor's coming to work for some of the big builders or come and set
00:13up shop and have their own businesses based here in Perth, if they're already considering
00:16it, certainly that incentive would make a difference in terms of making that decision
00:20to come.
00:21And trade up to paradise.
00:22A Property Council proposal similar to Queensland's Tradies in Paradise cash incentive, set to
00:28be picked up by the Cook Government in some form.
00:31There's lots of reasons why we want tradies to come to WA and there's lots of reasons
00:34why they would.
00:36Cost of living here is cheaper than on the east coast.
00:38Housing is cheaper than on the east coast.
00:41But getting enough of that housing built is the problem.
00:43Cost of construction is such that it's costing more to build the apartments than what they're
00:48able to be sold for, which makes it really difficult for them to be delivered.
00:52The Liberals aiming to push costs down through a $500 million housing fund, contributing
00:57to project infrastructure and fees and charges, on top of the Government's existing $80 million
01:03fund.
01:04We are a long way from meeting our targets, which are approximately 25,000 to 26,000 homes
01:09annually to meet those targets.
01:11This will unlock significant greenfield sites and apartments to get closer to those targets.
01:15This is just an opportunity to get more projects viable sooner, which will help to put a lid
01:20on some of those cost escalations.
01:22The Government's claiming it's just an imitation of their fund.
01:26I would honour them for copying us, but I'd make the point at the time he said it would
01:29not be effective and that we were effectively throwing money at property developers.
01:33The housing crisis has got worse since that funding allocation was made.
01:38The rental price is now, I think the median rental price is north of $650.
01:43We're in the middle of a housing crisis at the moment and it's probably not the best
01:47time to be politicising housing policy.
01:50Industry calling on the major parties to support any good policies that help to get more homes
01:55built.