Jim Chalmers backs 1.2 million Housing Accords goal, says Australia needs ‘ambition’ to solve housing crisis

Jim Chalmers has doubled down on Labor’s ability to build 1.2 million homes by June 30, 2029, after accidentally published advice from Treasury said the deadline would not be met. Partially unredacted files released to the ABC through a Freedom of Information request showed Treasury warning that the National Housing Accords would “not be met,” and suggested a review of Housing Australia, the national housing agency. While Labor has committed to building 1.2 million well-located homes in the five years to June 30, 2029, the target is already 55,300 homes behind following its first year of operation. Recent data compiled by the Institute of Public Affairs has also revealed that in the decade between 2014 to 2024, the time it took to build a freestanding home had increased 50 per cent, from 8.5 months to 12.7 months. In the same period the cost of building materials had also soared by 53 per cent. Despite the slow start, Mr Chalmers backed Labor’s ability to reach the target, adding that he was “pretty relaxed” about the accidental FOI slip. “Under current trajectories, we would fall short. But that doesn’t mean that between now and over the course of the next four years, that we can’t consider ways and work with the states and territories and others, local governments and others, on ways to build more homes,” he told reporters on Monday. While he acknowledged the government needs to “do more” and “do better” to reach the 1.2 million figure, he said the ambition was warranted given that housing is one of the “defining challenges in our economy”. “It’s not the worst thing from time to time for it to be understood in the broader community that this will be a difficult target to meet,” he said. “But if we all do our bit, we all play our part, as the Commonwealth has been willing to play, then we can build the homes that people desperately need.” Acting Coalition housing spokesman James Paterson said the advice from Treasury has “confirmed what Australians already know”. “Labor will fail to build the 1.2 million new homes they promised,” he said. “Under the former Coalition Government, Australia built an average of 190,000 new homes per year. Under Labor, that figure has dropped to barely 170,000. To meet their own housing target, Labor needs to build 250,000 new homes annually. “Instead of building housing, Labor are obsessed with building housing bureaucracies.” Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has previously vowed to cut red tape and regulation to supercharge the number of homes coming onto the market. Like Mr Chalmers, she said the Productivity Roundtable in August would help identify ways to improve planning policy. “It’s just too hard to build a house in this country because we’re not innovating enough and because we don’t have the workforce we need,” she told the ABC earlier this month. “So, the roundtable in August is going to be a really important opportunity for me and other people in this sector to come forward and say we need to make some big decisions about how we are going to shift those dynamics so we can get better housing outcomes for Australians.” Sharing more details of the highly-anticipated talks in August, Mr Chalmers said business leaders, unions and regulators would be asked to focus on resilience, productivity and sustainability across the three days. RBA governor Michele Bullock will speak on the first day of talks, while Productivity Commissioner Danielle Wood and Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson will respectively take charge of days three and four.