In the engine room of Australia’s growth

It’s a law of life that good news is slower to move than bad news.

It could be that bad news moves faster because bad news is easier to face if we share it with someone.

Many haven’t noticed that we start 2018 with the best economic outlook in a decade. The good news hasn’t travelled fast.

Our industry is in a good place. While construction peaked in many areas in 2017, the outlook is still remarkably strong.

It’s the jobs outlook that drives community and investor confidence and the jobs market is the best in an awfully long time.

Last year, Australia created a massive 403,000 new jobs, of which 75% of them were full time. The current jobs growth rate of 3.3 per cent is double the average over the last decade.

This is good news and it reflects what our industry knows: all of the states are growing, our industrial and office markets are strong, and our industry is working with governments to help our communities grow.

We are in the engine room of Australia’s growth. Property is the biggest employer in Australia, employing over 1.4 million Australians. Our work underpins the superannuation investments of another 14 million Australians and our industry pays over $72 billion in taxes.

Recently, we provided the federal government with our views on how we can continue to keep creating jobs and build more liveable cities. We don’t ask for handouts (or even that old cliché, a ‘hand-up’). Instead, we’ve said ‘here are the handbrakes on our cities – let’s remove them and keep growing Australia’. You can read more about our submission in this issue.