It can be difficult to comprehend just how quickly our working and personal lives have been changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was just over six weeks ago that the first major restrictions were introduced to control the spread of the virus. They had an immediate and profound impact across the economy requiring an unprecedented level of intervention by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments.
As governments take their first steps towards starting to ease some of the restrictions, they have identified the importance of the property and construction industries in driving the post-pandemic recovery.
There have been some welcome announcements by some of our state governments on plans to accelerate their planning approvals processes to bring shovel-ready projects to life. At the federal level, the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission is ramping up to drive the national response. It will be ably led by Peter Harris, the former chair of the Productivity Commission, who has been announced as its new chief executive officer.
That’s a very welcome appointment, as it was under his stewardship that the PC issued the landmark Shifting the Dial report in 2017 on ways to boost our economic productivity.
Of the five big levers the report said were integral to boosting Australia’s lagging productivity was ‘better functioning cities and towns’. This recognised that in the modern economy, there was a strongly urban dimension to productivity. That means a focus on infrastructure and planning and the tax settings that hold back investment. If you’re not familiar with it, I’d recommend a look through the report (although we don’t agree with all its recommendations). There was a lot of good thinking in it which may be reprised in coming months as our policy-makers look for the best levers to pull to get the Australian economy going again once the pandemic has passed.
In this issue of Property Australia we provide an update on the implementation of the commercial tenancy code of conduct around the country. It’s a state-by-state and territory-by-territory work in progress and our Property Council teams are there every step of the way on the design and implementation of the technical detail as governments put the national code into place in their jurisdiction.