In short: The Real Estate Institute of Queensland says high-paying government projects are pushing up the cost of construction.
An economist says growing wages are a contributing factor, but growing material costs, labour shortages, and excessive government regulations are in the way of development.
What’s next?: The government has vowed to build 55,000 social houses by the year 2046.
Crazy how the wealthiest people in society are all those over paid tradies
Wont somebody think of the poor, maligned billionaires??!
Unfortunately the building industry can’t possibly survive without the unions and red tape.
The lack of compliance, on everything from worker safety to common sense things like “make sure this wall is actually strong enough to stay upright”, is horrifically poor and would be so much worse if builders were given more freedom.
It’s the unions, I knew it was them! Even when it was decades of government policy supporting housing as an investment vehicle, I knew it was them!
Some CFMEU union jobs pay massive salaries to… stand around and chat with your mates.
For example they just fixed a water leak under the footpath outside our office. It took about 3 months and there were often five workers standing around doing almost nothing at all for days at a time.
When I had a water leak at home, we didn’t call a union construction company, we called a sole trader. It took one guy two hours to fix the leak, and he charged his “emergency work” rate, which I’m pretty sure was half the price a CFMEU company would have charged just to give us a quote for the job.
The only shining light in the housing affordability debate in Australia is when an economist gets the mic on something like Q&A and says the causes are juiced immigration and the tax code. But the other panellists invariably squirm, and the host obligingly steers the conversation back to a place where all the propagandists feel safe.
