The property development industry group Urban Taskforce has slammed the the Council of Australia Governments for failing to seize an opportunity to address the country’s housing shortfall.
The taskforce referred to action in relation to the Productivity Commission report on Zoning and Development Assessments1 it commissioned in 2010, which finalised in May this year.
The COAG's communiqué today merely notes that "each State and Territory is continuing to improve significantly its statutory planning systems", said the Taskforce's chief executive, Aaron Gadiel.
But he said some state planning systems were getting worse, not better.
"Australia's housing shortfall is at 200,000 homes, with a projection for it to grow to 308,000 by 2014," he said.
"The Productivity Commission's report identified key leading practices which could, if adopted across the nation, dramatically improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the state planning systems.
"They advocated broad and simplified development rules, more rational and transparent rules for infrastructure levies and eliminating impacts on the viability of existing businesses as a town planning consideration.
"There is no sign that state governments' have taken any note of the Productivity Commission's report, and clearly, the Commonwealth hasn't insisted that they should," Mr Gadiel said.
Gadiel said COAG's statement that "work [is] already under way [on] ... housing supply and affordability reform" seems to overlook that almost nothing COAG previously promised has been achieved.
"Key reports proposing reforms to Australia's housing bottlenecks have not been completed - or at least have been kept secret," Mr Gadiel said.
In April last year, the Council of Australia Government tasked a Housing Supply and Affordability Reform Working Party to report back to the Council by "mid-2010" on:
the potential to reform land aggregation, zoning and planning processes;
nationally consistent principles for housing development infrastructure charges;
the merits of measures to ensure greater consistency across jurisdictions, including local governments planning approval processes, in the application of building regulations; and
extending the land audit work to examine 'underutilised' land and to examine private holdings of large parcels of land.3 Mr Gadiel said that these reports are now overdue, but haven't seen the light of day.
"Every day that passes is another day that these key reports - if they even exist - gather dust," Gadiel said.
Gadiel said the new national reform agenda on environmental regulation was welcome, but queried whether it would be as successful as the reform program on housing affordability.
"Forgive me for being cynical, but if something as important as housing affordability has been buried, what hope to we have for improving environmental regulation?"
