Letters
Open letters and correspondence with government, industry, and the public.
Undercounting social housing building statistics
We are writing to express our concern that the Australian Bureau of Statisticsʼ building and construction data—specifically the Building Approvals and Building Activity series—are becoming an increasingly unreliable measure of genuine private sector building activity over the short-to-medium term.
Inquiry into barriers to homebuilding
We have three priority areas we believe would benefit from a Productivity Commission deep dive: zoning and planning rules as a barrier to housing construction, heritage and character restrictions as a barrier to building in well-located areas, and barriers to the recruitment of skilled migrants in construction trades.
Build to rent tax concessions exposure draft
Facilitating more build-to-rent is a key way for us to deliver more housing supply in a sustainable way — but it presents some unique challenges to our housing, planning and finance regulatory frameworks, some of which we’d like to address here.
Repurposing Defence land for public housing
We request that the Commonwealth consider as part of the 202425 budget a programme that would see the transfer of underutilised Commonwealth-owned land to state or local governments at no cost, for the purpose of building public and community housing
Solving the housing crisis needs skilled migrants
We are writing to you today regarding reports that your Government is moving to exclude skilled tradespeople from the fast-tracked high-income visa processing stream.
Knockdown rebuilds misrepresented in building data
We are writing to you today regarding a consistent misreporting of building completions in Canberra that may have repercussions on the implementation of National Cabinet’s ambitious and welcome New Home Bonus scheme.