Just when you thought it was safe to stick your head above the parapet there’s a small army of people doing the same.
Well at least we hope there’s more support for David Chandler’s idea for how to ramp up housing supply, that he aired this week.
And we presume that Andrew Bragg the senator from the great beyond of regular thinking didn’t all on his own concoct the nutty ideas that got him all the headlines his political heart could desire on Wednesday.
First to one of our favourite topics, housing. We were thrilled to see David Chandler the former Building Commissioner for NSW and former columnist for this masthead plonk his not inconsiderable heft onto the notion we’ve been advocating for centuries, well in parts at least.
In a big piece in The Sydney Morning Herald and again the next day in the newspaper’s editorial of all things Chandler’s views that governments should seize the mantle of leading housing delivery much more proactively took flight.
His ideas are excellent: a long form supply chain and pattern book that means it’s a rinse and repeat exercise for apartment design. Then use government land – which would slash the returns needed to reach feasibility.
Costs, he estimates would be around $350,000 to $400,000 and land $500,000 or so adding up to a final price of about 20 per cent below market.
Chandler adds that despite all the concessions governments have given developers, there has been “absolute market failure” to address the problem of the “missing middle” apartment sector.
In our view Chandler has gone part of the way to fixing the solution but what might be even more effective is to stop trying to get the private sector to be part of the solution when it is entirely responsible for the failure.
If taxpayer dollars are to be used to deliver housing, how about keeping control of those funds in public hands. We can’t see the sense of governments continuing to help private sector developers and builders turn a profit, which they should by all means – but off their own bat.
What we urgently need is government housing produced at cost like so many other nations manage to do.
Chandler is dead right about the economies of scale, pattern books and using government land – we would add modular construction because a nice strong and steady supply chain is the missing link to getting that industry off the ground.
But, for all but the modular factories, it probably makes more sense for the government to build its housing capability back to its old levels. Government is no more or less efficient than the private sector and there’d be jobs for all those builders, architects, project managers and builders that can’t cut it in the private market.
Andrew Bragg makes headlines… the modern way
At the National Press Club address on Wednesday, NSW Senator Andrew Bragg managed to fling himself on the front page of outrage around the nation by slamming immigration, Scott Morrison and the National Construction Code, which if you haven’t noticed has become the favourite punching bag of politicians far and wide.
Why is obvious – housing is on everyone’s lips: some because the prices are still too high to afford; some because prices are dropping and it’s a case of “ouch, that hurts my retirement fund”.
Bragg managed to offend on any number of levels but also to confuse with sensible policies as well – a perfect recipe for modern contradiction politics: “We have something for everyone, take your pick.”
But at last, there was someone who could steal One Nation’s thunder. Opposition leader Angus Taylor was warned to watch his back.
Here was a new potentially fearless and dangerous leader saying dramatic things like slashing immigration and backpackers would solve our housing problem.
The opposition threw cold water on his claims.
Federal Housing Minister Clare O’Neil threw something worse. She said Bragg’s speech was “genuinely unhinged” and “crazed”.
It was a “manic ideological fever dream” ranging from “repeated references to communism” and the Morrison government’s “madness” to denouncing the superannuation industry as “state-sponsored corruption.”
Bragg even apologised for not doing more to stop Morrison’s mania.
Then came the bit about the National Construction Code.
Look, we know it’s grown a tonne. But this is because we keep lifting standards. As Adrian Piani CEO of the Australian Building Codes Board said (more or less) at our Codes Red debate – people whose house didn’t burn down thanks to stronger protection won’t complain about the size of the NCC. Nor those whose kids didn’t die falling from a window (though we think there are better ways to keep kids safe than enforcing tiny two inch gaps or whatever on window openings).
Bragg wants to go backwards to the time when the world was nice. He wants to take the NCC from 2000 pages to 80 – and then back to 1988.
All the hard fought improvements since then, sometimes at the cost of $100,000 to do a single regulatory impact statement, would be blown away.
He wants a “basic Australian standard” instead. We used to call that a tent… or a humpy.
Away with “mandatory ramps, flattened shower flooring or reinforced walls” which would all be “optional extras” for those that could afford them of course. He promised his version of housing would be safe but simple. Tents and humpies can also be safe by the way.
Poor insulation is paid for by higher energy bills, O’Neill noted.
In no surprise to anyone, the Housing Industry Association (HIA) and the Urban Development Institute of Australia were quick to offer support to the nutty senator.
The Property Council did its usual two-step across both sides of the fence, liking removal of taxes on foreign property investors, support for MMC, and more housing in general (yes, we all like ice cream too). And not so happy with throwing out the national rule book on building standards, saying it was a recipe for “more confusion, variations and more time spent arguing about the requirements”.
The Energy Efficiency Council said that the speech
lost sight of the basic purpose of minimum standards: ensuring homes are built properly in the first place.
“This proposal is a cost?of?living time bomb,” CEO Luke Menzel said. “Ripping efficiency standards up means higher energy bills for years to come. I never thought I’d see an Australian politician out and about advocating for higher energy bills, but here we are.”
The Australian Institute of Architects’ national president David Wagner said, “we caution against changes that would see things like energy efficiency or accessibility reduced to ‘optional extras’. Energy efficiency is not an optional extra; it can be the difference between whether someone on a low income can afford to heat their house or not in winter.”
But now for the confusion.
Surprisingly Bragg also said he liked locally produced energy. He called out the prime minister for “begging for petrol,” which “undermined the ability to utilise our own resources.”
Ditto electrification. Bragg chaired a senate inquiry into this, saying it was a “crucial economic and environmental endeavour”.
“We should pursue this along with sustainable aviation fuel, biofuels and transport electrification.”
So a bit like the Orange Menace on policies – something for everyone!
As if reading our minds he added: “There is a purity test applied to politicians. Either you’re for fossil fuels, or you’re for renewables. I just want more of everything.”
We’d totally ignore Bragg in the normal scheme of things but in this political world he is just as likely to be the next prime minister.
We need to think very hard about how we want this crazy political world to play out. This is not a practice run.
