On the next front in the War of Mass Distraction on housing

If Treasury is serious about productivity, it won’t let the roundtable in Canberra next week freeze building codes because doing so means we will get an explosion of costs in several other areas.

And that’s a very anti-productivity and very expensive thing to do.

What the poor overworked and clearly hoodwinked treasury boffs are being asked to do is to ease the rules and regs over buildings in order to solve the housing crisis.

Now let’s be brutally clear. This is the latest front in the War of Mass Distraction on housing.

Weaker rules will allow quicker shoddier buildings, maybe.

But it will also generate weaker energy efficiency. Which means householders will have to fork out way more for heating and cooling bills. Not very productivity focused, Treasury bods, wouldn’t you say?

It means that less light, less fresh air in homes are likely to make people get sicker, more depressed end up in the health system that’s already exploding with cost overruns.

Housing in dangerous areas exposed to climate disasters mean someone has to pick up the bill – We the Taxpayer, again – or face a sub-culture of people living in places no one else wants.

The blanket calls to “cut red tape” are seductive, riffing perfectly on the “abundance” trope that looks more like the Magic Pudding every day. Get rid of those pesky rules and regs and you can build what you like.

Emma Riley, president of the Planning Institute of Australia nails the issue in her article this week, much more politely than we’re capable of right now.

“What’s the trade off?” she asks. Is it housing in bushfire, flood or erosion-prone areas? Is it expanding car-dependent suburbs, or weakening biodiversity and lower building standards that reduce natural light and ventilation and harm health and well-being?

David Chandler, former NSW Building Commissioner similarly called for sense to prevail in a note he sent to us on Wednesday.

He warned of “wolves in sheep’s clothing”

“In the sea of noise” to wind back standards and regulations, there were opportunities to make both more efficient, but there should be “no relaxation of their intent under the guise of lifting productivity”, he said.

“That would run the risk of undermining growing public confidence in new housing stock and the performance of regulators, especially in the eastern states.”

Bronwyn Weir highly regarded authority on building quality made similar comments on national radio on Thursday morning. And said the National Construction Code (NCC) should be a living evolving thing, responding to the problems that emerge. (Not stuck in a kind of cryogenic/Botox freeze).

But the biggest voice, the one the federal Treasury seems to be bending over backwards to listen closely to is that of Denita Wawn, chief executive of Master Builders Australia.

Her message this week is to point the finger at building regulations as one of the main reasons responsible for our  housing crisis. A week ago it was zoning and planning.

But that clearly didn’t wash. Too many academic disavowals, too much guffawing behind politely shielding hands.

Because developers and builders themselves had no problem sharing their views: they blame costs of construction through cost of finance, shortages of construction skills, supply chain bottle necks…blah blah blah…in other words stock standard market forces and cycles.

Now to be fair, there are more than a few professionals in architecture and quality development companies that we respect who echo the refrain that the NCC has become too clunky, too heavy and too difficult to follow for anyone without a PhD.

So it needs some simplifying. But to freeze it is to start the rollout of our country all the way to Washington.

Already NSW Premier Chris Minns has slashed 300 jobs from the people who report on flood risk. Wow, genius! That’s one way to keep the people from panicking.

Just as Trump has eliminated climate risk experts, jobs data experts and anyone else who stands in the way of his rhetoric over reason.

That’s sad enough. But what the federal government looks like it’s about to do is even sadder. It’s about to implement one of the key policies that the coalition took to the last federal election and for which they were roundly rejected.

This government is not looking good on other fronts too. There’s delay on the release of the climate data because the numbers are so diabolical. But gee, Mr Albanese we can see the news reports from Europe for ourselves – of wildfires rampant in beautiful areas, and 42 degree heat in places that swoon at 20.

We leave you with these words from Polly Hemming of the Australia Institute this week who noted ahead of the roundtable in Canberra that the biggest risks to our productivity isn’t even on the public’s radar. (Which may explain why the name was dropped in lieu of something a bit more slippery, around economic reform). She noted:

• The Albanese Government still hasn’t released Australia’s first national climate risk assessment — and new Australia Institute polling shows most Australians don’t even know what “climate risk” means.
  The Australia Institute‘s 2024 Climate of the Nation found:
• 61 per cent of Australians say they have not heard, or are unsure if they have heard, the term “climate risk”
• Only 39 per cent of Australians have heard the term “climate risk”
• 60 per cent are unsure or unaware of any federal government action to manage or reduce the negative impacts of climate change.
  
  The UN calls climate change “the biggest economic, social and environmental threat facing the planet and humanity”. It is already driving fires, floods, supply chain shocks and insurance crises — posing material risks to our homes, communities and livelihoods.
  
  Meanwhile, the knowledge gap is stark:
• Insurers have detailed climate risk modelling and are raising premiums, redrawing maps, and withdrawing from high-risk areas
• Governments are cherry picking what aspects of climate risk they want to pay attention to and privately embedding climate risk into defence planning
• Polluting industries have had the data for decades and are aggressively making internal decisions to safeguard their assets.

But the public doesn’t have access to the same information. Without transparency, Australians can’t judge whether government and industry decisions are protecting us, or just protecting themselves.

If climate risk is shaping the future of our economy, housing, and safety, then we have a right to see the full picture.

Like we said…