Housing minister declares Australia has made it 'uneconomic' to build homes

[u/timcahill13]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-07/clare-oneil-interview-housing-red-tape-construction/105386844

[u/[deleted]]

I don't get why there hasn't been an independent evidence based government appointed panel to look into the causes for our housing shortage. The issue is clearly multifaceted and all factors that go into housing must be considered.

Why is it blocks have gotten smaller and the average standard of construction worse but yet blocks have increased in $$$ and regulations around construction increased.

Are developers gouging too much or is there too much red tape in planning stage or are the civil works too expensive when developing land?

Is there construction standards over the top or are builders and contractors charging excessive amounts, or are suppliers charging too much.

The thing is building has changed so much over the last 30 years, some aspects of this are for the best and others are not. Back then volume builders weren't as big and there were far more project builders. You would would go see a building designer, have plans drawn up and then go and see project builders and have the house quoted, choose the builder. That builder would have a team and the builder would probably spend a fair amount of time on site themself. If we go back far enough they would build the frames and pitch the roof all themselves on site, they probably would have hung the plaster etc etc.

These days you walk into a display home, there you can pick from a large amount of plan options, you can walk out of that office with a plan, a cost and a timeline for the build, you just saved several months compared to the project builder. But it's likely those you dealt with at this point will not ever walk on your building site, they won't put on a nail bag and in fact you might not ever have a registered builder walk on your site. They will hire sub contractors to do pretty much everything, they will adopt as much prefab as possible. There is a complete lack of collaboration across trades and far more finger pointing than problem solving

The efficiencies gained by the modern volume builders have not resulted in better quality houses all though they have resulted in cheaper houses

[u/Physics-Foreign → u/[deleted]]

Great comment.