Senator The Hon Murray Watt, Minister for the Environment and Water
The Hon Clare O'Neil MP, Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness, Minister for Cities
The Albanese Labor Government is making progress accelerating housing supply by fast-tracking environmental approvals and streamlining construction regulations.
New data released today in the State of the Housing System report confirms Australia is making progress on housing supply, but global pressures are creating fresh challenges that must be met.
Prior to the recent conflict in the Middle East, the Council was estimating around 980,000 new homes could have been expected to be delivered in the National Housing Accord period. That is 42,000 more than was forecast in the 2025 report.
However, the conflict in the Middle East now brings heightened uncertainty to the outlook for housing supply - and the report makes this clear through two scenarios:
- A short-term scenario of global uncertainty could reduce supply by around 10,000 homes
- A more prolonged increase could see up to 33,000 fewer homes delivered by mid-2029
In the context of these challenges, productivity has never been more important. Every step we take to lift housing productivity strengthens our resilience in the face of supply chain challenges.
The Albanese Government is making progress by cutting delays in environmental approvals through targeted reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Since August last year, the Government's EPBC strike team has approved housing projects delivering more than 20,000 homes, tracking towards the target of 26,000.
The Government is also progressing structural reform to the approvals system, including:
- Establishing Australia's first national Environment Protection Agency
- Establishing a new streamlines assessment pathway to reduce assessment timeframes for proponents who provide sufficient information up front
- Moving toward a single, streamlined approval process with the states and territories
This builds on yesterday's announcement that the Government will invest $45 million over four years to progress bilateral agreements with the states and territories.
The Government is also making progress toward streamlining the National Construction Code, following residential changes to the NCC being paused until 2029.
The current system is adding unnecessary complexity and cost, with tens of thousands of dollars in compliance costs per apartment, hundreds of pages of inconsistent state and territory variations and long delays for new building products and innovation to be approved.
Following the Economic Reform Roundtable, the Government has run six major workshops, met with over 50 stakeholders, and received over 213 submissions totalling 1,800 pages.
The Government today released a progress update on the work underway to modernise the NCC, with action being taken across five key reform directions:
- Simplifying access and use
- Recommitting to a national market
- Tougher, more rigorous cost-benefit analysis
- Enabling innovation and new products
- Reducing the cost of compliance
The Albanese Government is tackling housing supply from every angle - and this progress builds on that work. This upcoming budget will have housing front-and-centre - it will be a budget that will build more homes, and a budget that will help more first home buyers.
Quotes attributable to Minister for Housing, Homelessness and Cities, Clare O'Neil:
"Housing is the defining challenge facing Australians right now - and we're taking it on from every
angle.
"Real progress is being made on housing supply - despite the impacts of the conflict in the Middle East making it harder to build.
"Cutting red tape, speeding up approvals, and making it easier to build - that's how we get more homes, faster."
Quotes attributable to Minister for the Environment, Murray Watt:
"The Albanese Government is activating every lever we have to deliver more homes for Australians.
"Our housing strike team is accelerating through national environmental law assessments, with more than 20,000 new homes greenlit across metropolitan and regional areas in just a few months.
"Our landmark EPBC reforms are also starting to roll out, delivering faster housing approvals via new streamlined approval pathways, better and more enduring bilateral agreements and improved strategic assessments and bioregional planning.
"These reforms will also ensure strong environmental protections are maintained through new National Environmental Standards, and an independent National Environmental Protection Agency with tough compliance and enforcement powers, to make sure homes are built in the right places."
