A national public housing summit Australia needs, within six months, a twenty-year compact, building 50,000 public homes a year. What it costs and what you get. Andrew Brown.
The Prime Minister and the premiers call a National Public Housing Summit within six months and sign a twenty-year compact with one number at the top: public and community housing goes from 4% of households to at least 10, passing 7 inside a decade.
A national public housing corporation builds 50,000 net new homes a year, half for people in greatest need and half as cost rental for working households on six-year terms. The equivalent of today’s entire waiting list is housed in three and a half years. Within ten years, about 40,000 households a year walk out with a deposit. Rents and prices land 10 to 20% below where they would otherwise be. Then ask your MP whether they back the summit and the target, and write down the answer.
Politicians talk about the housing crisis the way they talk about drought, as something that happened to us. It did not happen. It was not built. It is the biggest economic problem the country has, and
it needs a construction program, not another grant.
Ten % means close to 700,000 extra homes on today’s household count, and the count keeps growing, which is why the program has to start at 50,000 a year and climb.
All governments
When I say whole of government, I mean all of it, working hand in hand. The Commonwealth, because Treasury controls the borrowing and Immigration sets an intake that supply has to match.
The states, because they hold the land and the delivery agencies. Councils, because they control approvals. And the not-for-profit providers. Put them in one room with tenants, First Nations organisations, unions and the super funds, and do not let them out without a signed deal.
Developers should be in the room too. They should not be running it. Property is the biggest business donor to both major parties, and at some point a minister is going to have to look that industry in the eye and say no. Publicly.
Two streams, then. One houses people in greatest need at income-linked rents. The other offers cost-rental homes to working households, where the rent covers finance, maintenance and management and nobody’s speculative margin.
The corporation does the long-term borrowing and standardises design and procurement, so that the thousandth terrace near a train line costs less than the first.
Every target must be net of demolitions and sales. And before another hectare of public land is sold, someone should have to explain why it cannot carry homes. You sell land once. You collect rent on it forever.
Decentralise
Build a good share of it where the country actually wants people to live. Governments have talked about decentralisation since Whitlam backed Albury Wodonga in 1973, and it never stuck because the jobs went one way and the housing went another.
Public cost rental homes fix that.
Offer a nurse or a young family a well-built home in Bendigo, Toowoomba, Wagga or Launceston at a deeper discount than the city offer, on condition they live and work there for the term, and you have a relocation incentive worth more than any grant. The regional hospital gets its staff, and Sydney gets some breathing room.
What does the country get? Start with the queue. More than 200,000 households are waiting, and 32,400 were housed last year. Send half of a 50,000-a-year program to the first stream, and allocations pass 57,000. That clears a list the size of today’s in three and a half years.
Ownership
Ownership next. Put the other 25,000 a year into cost rental on six-year terms. Within a decade, there are 250,000 of those homes and about 40,000 households a year walking out with a deposit.
Then prices. The Grattan Institute estimates that 50,000 extra homes a year for a decade would leave prices and rents 10 to 20% lower than they would otherwise be. The catch is that the homes must be additional to what the private sector builds, which is why the builder has to be public and has to keep going through a slump.
Paying for it
Can we afford it? We found $368 billion for AUKUS on the upper estimate. Allow a generous $750,000 a home and the same money builds nearly half a million of them.
And a house, unlike a submarine, pays rent.
It would also cool the angriest argument in the country. Last year 51% of Australians told the Scanlon Foundation survey that immigration was too high. Yet 71% of that same group said multiculturalism had been good for Australia.
The researchers had already found the concern was driven by housing and the economy rather than opposition to diversity. Build the homes, and we can argue about migration on its merits.
The politics
Now the politics. The Greens have come closest. In 2024 they proposed a federal public developer to build 360,000 homes in five years. They should finish the job: adopt the 10% target, back the summit and use their numbers in the Senate to press for both.
Labor built this system under Chifley and should want it back. The Liberals can claim Menzies and Playford. The independents have no excuse at all.
So ask your MP, your premier and your housing minister two questions. Will you back a National Public Housing Summit? Will you back a minimum of 10%?
Write down the answer. Governments built the casino. They can build the alternative. Build homes, not excuses.
Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman and Palestine peace activist