The major parties have entered the third week of the election campaign in a housing contest with both parties seeking to win over first home buyers. Labor has focused on a 5 percent deposit while the Coalition would offer tax deductible mortgage repayments. Master Builders' Association CEO Denita Wawn says both policies would result in a rise in the number of new builds.
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00:00Both policies of the ALP and the Coalition are focusing on new builds in some of their
00:08policies announced yesterday.
00:11With the ALP it's about 100 odd thousand homes to be built for first home owners.
00:17With the Coalition it's the mortgage deduction in terms of your interest payments, again
00:25only on new builds.
00:26So the argument from both sides of politics being that this will enable a greater number
00:32of homes to be built.
00:34Of course we know that that is all dependent upon demand and also people understanding
00:39that if they're getting best bang for their buck, for their dollar, construction costs
00:43have increased by 40% over the last five years.
00:47And so we say that if we're really going to utilise these incentives wisely, then we need
00:53to focus on getting those costs down.
00:55Okay.
00:56Then on infrastructure, the Coalition has a plan to boost water, power and sewage facilitation
01:01and Labor, a $2 billion program.
01:03Yeah, certainly the critical infrastructure is so important.
01:09We can't build homes until you have all that critical infrastructure in place.
01:14At the moment the Coalition policy gives us a bit extra money in terms of the facilitation
01:20of that as opposed to the ALP.
01:22So that is a good start to resolving some of those supply constraints.
01:27Nevertheless, we also need more people to actually undertake that task and that's one of the
01:33biggest contributing factors to the increase of costs in building.
01:36We don't have enough people to do all this work.
01:39So, do you have reservations then about the Coalition's immigration plans or would you like
01:46to see those workers come from people already in Australia?
01:50Well, it's really twofold, Jo.
01:53If you're going to decrease immigration numbers, and I think both parties are indicating reductions,
01:59the Coalition's slightly higher reduction numbers, but we say you have to prioritise skilled
02:07tradespeople.
02:07We simply need more people to build these homes, these roads, these schools and hospitals,
02:14and we need more skilled people.
02:16So, prioritise tradies in the migration scheme, but equally, we know we have a huge number
02:22of skilled people in Australia that are finding it too expensive and too time consuming
02:27to get their skills recognised and are working more as Uber drivers and taxi drivers and the
02:32like.
02:33But there is a two-pronged attack there in terms of migration solutions and we'd like
02:38to see more from both parties in that space.
02:40And what about encouraging construction?
02:43Labor's keen to encourage prefab and modular home construction and the opposition wants
02:47to freeze changes to the National Construction Code?
02:51Yeah, the Productivity Commission has advised that we should review the Construction Code.
02:59It is cumbersome.
03:00It has created a lot of complexity and costs over the last few years.
03:04So, that certainly needs to be undertaken.
03:06But when it comes to modular, builders are telling us at the moment that it's simply the
03:11numbers do not stack up in comparison to traditional methods of construction when it comes to introducing
03:18greater use of modular homes.
03:20So, we need to do some innovation work in that space.
03:24The Coalition has been silent on that while the ALP are doing a lot of work in that space.
03:30We're looking at these policies holistically, Jo.
03:33It can't be a piecemeal approach and all seem to need to do some more heavy lifting.
03:38And certainly, we are concerned that the Coalition at the moment is not talking about social housing
03:43as an alternative to their abolition of the Housing Australia Future Fund.
03:47Yeah, and getting on to that as this final aspect of the housing chat on affordable homes.
03:53How do you rate how the Housing Australia Future Fund has gone over these first couple of years?
03:58And as you mentioned there, the opposition are not keen on it.
04:02Yeah, we've seen certainly an increase in terms of the dollars to be spent on social housing under the ALP.
04:10Master Builders is agnostic about how you allocate the funds, whether it's on budget or out of budget, out of cycle.
04:19Governments have to commit to social housing.
04:22We've got a huge shortage of social housing in this country, so we want to see more.
04:27The building is starting to occur in terms of half.
04:32The Coalition have previously committed to social housing through different funding arrangements
04:38and we'd like to see them stump up again before the end of this election campaign period.
04:42Yeah.
04:43And so, taking into account everything we've gone through there in the last couple of minutes,
04:48are you tending to favour one over the other or how do you assess them both?
04:54Well, at this stage we're saying neck and neck.
04:57There's some gaps in both their policies and, of course, I haven't discussed the elephant in the room
05:02in terms of industrial relations and the stranglehold on productivity and our concerns with the ALP
05:08in some of the changes they made in the term of government.
05:11So, we're saying neck and neck at the moment.
05:13We're holding them all to account over the next couple of weeks and then we'll put a final
05:19summation just before Election Day.
05:21So, finally, come back to the Department of Education Day.
05:26Thank you so much.