O'Neil says she's not a YIMBY, but here's how she plans to help fix the housing shortage
Planning laws are placing the interests of anti-development residents above Australians who want affordable homes, federal Housing Minister Clare O'Neil has declared as the government faces falling short of its own promise to build 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade.
O'Neil said she expected Labor's $10 billion election promise to build 100,000 homes specifically for first home buyers would be fast-tracked through the statesto avoid the quicksand of planning rules. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has handed her more responsibility to help fix the housing shortage.
O'Neil's second-term focus to overhaul planning schemes and drive up construction by slashing building regulations represents a shift from Labor's first-term agenda centred on social housing and its shared equity scheme.
'Planning laws at the state level are being used much too much to protect existing residents, and not enough to address the fact that we've got millions of people who are in housing distress,' O'Neil said in an interview with this masthead.
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'We need more housing of all kinds, and medium-density housing in the middle-ring suburbs is obviously going to be a really important part of the mix.'
Slow and rigid planning regulations are a key reason that most analysts estimate Labor is on track to fall more than 200,000 homes short of its 2022 budget target to build 1.2 million properties between 2024 and mid-2029.
A major problem is that planning laws are the domain of state and local governments. O'Neil pledged to use every tool at her disposal to shift the dial to reduce what she described as the 'thicket of regulation' builders faced.
'There is a lot of work that we're all going to need to do in the next three years, and I'd include the Commonwealth in that. None of this is an attack on the states. We've all been a part of this problem, and we all need to be a part of the solution,' she said.
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