Russell Broadbent here, your Member for Monash.
Australia is in the middle of a dire housing crisis, and the impact on families with young children is particularly distressing.
Not only is housing ridiculously expensive – both to rent and to buy – but the homes are simply not there!
In response to this, the government claims that they can build over a million houses in just five years.
But if you ask me, they’re dreaming.
Australians need these homes – desperately. But there are significant limitations that will prevent this ambitious target from being met.
Firstly, new housing starts came in at the lowest level in more than a decade last year, 90,000 below an annual target of 240,000 homes.
Secondly, Australian builders and construction firms are collapsing at an unprecedented rate.
According to ASIC, between July 2022 and April 2023, 1,709 building and constructioncompanies across Australia went into administration.
These aren’t just small companies – these are big names like Porter Davis, Probuild and Pivotal Homes – many who’ve operated for decades.
Thirdly, across NSW, migrant families are apparently taking up more than 35,000 social housing tenancies – over 22 per cent of all tenancies in the state!
And on top of this, there’s a dire shortage of skilled building workers.
Between collapsing construction companies, scarcity of skilled workers, and booming population – how on earth can we build enough houses for Aussies and the hundreds of thousands of migrants hoping Australia will give them a better life?
The government of the day can make all the promises they like they can throw billions of taxpayer funds to the states.
But at the end of the day, the homes are simply not being built.
We need to rebuild our collapsing construction industries – and quickly, before this housing crisis becomes a humanitarian crisis.
That’s justice as I see it.
