Government funding earmarked for affordable housing will give developers the boost they need to help alleviate housing shortages in the regions, Minister for Regional Development Catherine King told the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday.
The Housing Australia Fund Bill 2023, which passed the House of Representatives last month and is before the Senate, is an important step in delivering on a $10billion election commitment to ensure more Australians have a safe and affordable place to call home.
Answering a question from Ai Group’s Head of Corporate Affairs and National Press Club Director Tony Melville about the difficulty in attracting and retaining workers in the regions, Ms King said the Housing Australia Future Fund would help to address the problem by boosting investment in social and affordable housing across the country — particularly in the regions.
“Regions have great opportunities in terms of land availability,” she said.
“Housing developers want to be involved. They want to see land released and be involved in developments, but they can't because capital investment is difficult for them.
“That’s what the Housing Affordability Fund is about.”
Ms King, the Member of Parliament for Ballarat since 2001, said skills and labour shortages in construction and engineering were exacerbating the housing crisis.
“We haven’t been training enough kids or getting enough people to make career changes into the construction sector,” she said.
“This is a problem that is decades in the making.
“I’ve got an engineering school in my hometown with hardly any students.
“We built this magnificent engineering facility when we were last in government but trying to get people into engineering has been a big problem.”
The international border closure that came with COVID heightened the crisis by exposing Australia’s reliance on migrants to fill skills and labour shortages, Ms King said.
“(Now), we’ve got a really big issue about how to build and develop this workforce for the future and getting kids and women into (construction and engineering) and not solely relying on migration.”
Catherine King MP will join Ai Group Chief Executive Innes Willox in a special Ai Group member briefing on Monday, April 17, to outline the Federal Government's regional priorities and its vision for regional development.
Click here for more information and to register.
Wendy Larter is Communications Manager at the Australian Industry Group. She has more than 20 years’ experience as a reporter, features writer, contributor and sub-editor for newspapers and magazines including The Courier-Mail in Brisbane and Metro, the News of the World, The Times and Elle in the UK.
