Housing takes centre stage at economic reform roundtable

From freezing the National Construction Code to reforming environmental regulations, day two of the economic reform roundtable zeroed in on housing.  

Held from August 19 to August 21, the federal government’s economic reform roundtable has brought nearly 30 industry representatives across Australia’s economy together.  

Over the course of three days, the roundtable is tackling how the nation can improve across three topics of “productivity”, “resilience” and “budget sustainability and tax reform”.  

The first day focused on resilience with the roundtable discussing international risks, opportunities and trade, skills attraction and capital investment.  

The second day turned to productivity, with the three sessions discussing better regulation and approvals, competition and dynamism and AI and innovation.  

In the lead up to the roundtable, many housing industry bodies called for housing to be a priority, specifically around productivity and how the government can work to improve conditions for the industry to build more homes.  

Here are some takeaways from the discussion on day two around productivity and the challenges being encountered in construction.

Productivity roadblocks 

After treasurer Jim Chalmers gave his opening remarks, the agenda kicked off with Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood leading a presentation about productivity and reform.  

In February 2025, the Commission released its own report “Housing construction productivity: Can we fix it?”, which found the nation is building half as many homes per hour worked as it did in 1995.  

The first session of the roundtable then focused on how regulations and approval systems slow home building down.  

Earlier in the day, opposition leader Sussan Ley, who spoke at a press conference in Croydon Park, addressed a potential solution in freezing updates to the National Construction Code (NCC).  

“What we heard today was that regulations including that code are adding 50% to the cost of a home. That is unacceptable,” Ms Ley said.  

“Remember that estimates of building a home and that cost, that 50% is not the building of the home itself. It’s not the construction that we see around us today. It’s rules, it’s regulation. It’s red tape.”  

Ms Ley said the government will have to do more than pause the NCC to get “housing supply back on track”.  

“We do know that supply is a huge problem, and we do know that the Labor government has provided funds to the states in order to help unblock that supply, but it hasn’t happened. This is a challenge for the federal government,” she said.  

“It is not good enough to say we’re giving the states money, we’re helping out state governments for whatever priorities they may have, but the end result is what counts.” 

During the first session, Business Council chief executive Bran Black said there was a lot of discussion, particularly around the NCC, but noted there was no concrete agreement among the attendees.  

“There isn’t agreement on that [pausing the NCC] within the room, but I think it’s really important to remember that our role is to put forward ideas, and hopefully we can achieve a level of consensus,” Mr Black said during a press conference after the first session.  

“We would continue to make the case that the evidence is very clear that with respect to the National Construction Code, we do need to give a bit of a pause for thought, if nothing else, so that home builders have the chance to catch up with the existing regulations and to try and get ahead in the critical task of delivering homes that ultimately support Australians into the great Australian dream.”   

Mr Black also noted environment approvals at the federal level were discussed with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.  

This has often been looked at as a barrier to residential land release and housing development.  

Mr Black said there was a consensus that there needs to be a balance between “environmental outcomes and improving business processes”.  

“There is disagreement in terms of the role of environmental regulation, and we take the view that it’s really important to have a separation between the entity that is ultimately responsible for compliance and the entity that’s ultimately responsible for approvals,” he said.  

After the government’s federal election win this year, it promised to establish a national environment protection agency (EPA) to lead new EPBC Act reforms. 

This government says this will deliver stronger environmental protection while providing more efficient project assessments.  

“What we see is the importance of making sure that a federal EPA is effectively set up along the same lines as what you see with state-based EPAs, where they attend to compliance, but they do not attend to approval, and that’s important, because you don’t want the same entity doing both approvals and compliance,” Mr Black said.  

“And what we’re saying is not that we want, for example, the Treasury to be undertaking these types of assessments. We want a body that is charged with the responsibility of weighing up very carefully social, economic and environmental considerations and giving weight accordingly to all of them.” 

The final day of the economic reform roundtable will spotlight discussions on government services and spending, and tax reform.  

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