No quick fixes for housing affordability
16 June 2010
Australia's current housing affordability crisis has taken 20 years to be fully manifested, and according to this year's State of the Regions Report, to be released at 12.45pm today at the National General Assembly of Local Government in Canberra, it will take a decade or two of intense policy application to fix.
"The State of the Regions Report proves that the current shortage of affordable housing is not a recent development that can simply be blamed on council planning processes," said Cr Geoff Lake, President of the Australian Local Government Association.
"We have long been arguing that blaming local government for the housing affordability crisis is simply not credible. Now this report backs that up."
ALGA commissioned Dr Peter Brain of National Economics to address the housing affordability problem as part of the annual State of the Regions Report with a view to putting some rigour into the causes and solutions to housing affordability in Australia.
"If we do not understand the real causes of the problem we will never as a community develop sustainable solutions to appropriately or affordably house our citizens", Cr Lake said.
The report shows that decades of under investment in infrastructure and misguided industry policy have resulted in housing shortages. Investment in commuter transport and freight transport would have supported job generation in regions with greenfield sites. The report estimates that the curtailment of government transport investment required to support new dwelling construction since 1980 has now generated an investment backlog of the order of $350 billion. In addition, government investment in industry policy and service provision has fallen short by around $150 billion.
"To address a problem of this magnitude requires all levels of government and industry to work collaboratively rather engaging in some old fashion council bashing and tinkering at the edges with talk of administrative reform of planning processes.
"Disappointingly, state and federal government ministers appear captives of the development industry in picking the low hanging fruit of planning process reform to create the illusion of government action on affordable housing. We wish they would turn their minds to the real problem and we hope this State of the Regions Report helps them to focus on it."
- Media inquiries:
- ALGA: President Cr Geoff Lake on 0411 645281 or Amanda Lynch on 0419 123 862
- National Economics: Dr Peter Brain on 0419 588021.
- The Report will be available for media at the launch or from the ALGA website: www.alga.asn.au after the launch. To access a password contact Zaman Khaliqu-ul on 0406 488 073.
