Planning reform won’t solve Australia’s housing crisis

The SMH’s Sydney Editor, Michael Koziol, has called on Australia’s governments to emulate New Zealand’s planning reforms, arguing it will boost housing supply and alleviate the affordability crisis:

New Zealand has given us Crowded House, Russell Crowe and pavlova – could it now deliver us an elegant solution to the housing affordability crisis?…

Late last year, the government passed a housing bill that applied new Medium Density Residential Standards, which allow landowners to build three dwellings of up to three stories on most blocks in those five fast-growing cities (also including Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch)

They’re not moving slowly, either. Councils were required to notify the changes by August and in Auckland public submissions will close at the end of this month.

The city of 1.7 million people had already been on a density drive since 2016, when it up-zoned nearly all of its inner suburban area. A recent report found Auckland built an additional 27,000 homes as a result of the relaxed planning laws; in other words, it was a raging success in increasing supply…

Professor Nicole Gurran, an urban planning expert at the University of Sydney, says much of what Auckland and New Zealand are doing now has happened in Sydney since the 1990s.

Over time, the government has tried to strip councils of their power over development consent by creating local and regional planning panels independent of council, rezoning land near train lines and sometimes taking direct control of developments and precincts.

New Zealand is one of the few nations on earth that makes Australian housing look cheap:

Auckland, which “had already been on a density drive since 2016, when it up-zoned nearly all of its inner suburban area”, has some of the most expensive housing in the world with a median price of $1.1 million (down from a peak of around $1.3 million):

So clearly, Auckland is a market that Australian planners should not be trying to emulate. Heck, as noted by Professor Nicole Gurran above, “much of what Auckland and New Zealand are doing now has happened in Sydney since the 1990s”, yet prices in Sydney are by far the most expensive in Australia.

Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over again and hoping for a different result?

If Michael Koziol is so concerned about a lack of housing supply and housing affordability, why isn’t he lobbying against the Albanese Government’s ‘Big Australia’ policy, which has lifted the nation’s permanent migrant intake to a record high and promises to turbo-charge temporary migration to record levels under the guise of “visa backlogs”?

It’s not as if Australia hasn’t rapidly lifted dwelling construction over the past decade:

The problem is that housing construction failed to keep up with demand because population growth accelerated even more following the doubling of immigration from 2006:

The notion that Australia’s housing affordability woes have been driven by a ‘lack of supply’ is utterly ridiculous.

Why focus on the supply-side of the housing market rather than the obvious solution of ensuring that immigration stays at sensible and sustainable levels?

Obviously, jamming 235,000 migrants into Australia each year, as projected by the Intergenerational Report (chart below), will make the housing supply problem intractable.

How will Australia solve the ‘supply’ problem when it is projected to grow by 13.1 million people (50%) in only 40 years – equivalent to adding another Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Australia’s existing population?

Housing ‘experts’ and commentators should be honest and admit that the single biggest driver of any Australian housing shortage is extreme immigration. And the Albanese Government’s record immigration push is about to make the problem so much worse.

Australia’s ‘housing shortage’ could be permanently solved with the stroke of a pen by the federal government. All it needs to do is reduce immigration back to historical pre-2005 levels. Doing so would also negate the need to bulldoze our suburbs into high density.

Moreover, it would align with the wishes of the Australian people, who overwhelmingly do not support a return to pre-COVID levels of immigration.

If you don’t like Sydney’s housing crisis, Michael Koziol, it is time that you and The SMH push back against Albo’s ‘Big Australia’. Otherwise, you are just another housing phony shedding crocodile tears.