Daniel Gannon, South Australian Executive Director of the Property Council and panel from The Advertiser’s Housing Forum
Earlier this month, the Property Council partnered with News Limited and its Adelaide masthead, The Advertiser, to host a landmark forum to address South Australia’s housing supply crisis and the policy path ahead.
Importantly, Treasurer Stephen Mullighan and Planning Minister Nick Champion were part of this discussion, indicating a government willingness to work with industry on providing short- and medium-term solutions.
Our collective motivation was simple. We now face a perfect storm of inflation, skills shortages and supply chain uncertainties, which is profoundly impacting the great Australian dream – the prospect of owning or even renting a place to call home.
We saw this as an opportunity to raise the bar in the way governments, industry, the property sector, and media collaborate to solve the housing supply challenge in a way we wouldn’t during pre-pandemic times, like we have seen recently in Queensland with our leadership credentials on full display.
Together with Adrian Esplin (Sarah Constructions), Maria Palumbo (Junction Australia), Claire Scapinello (ECH), Torie Brown (Student Accommodation Council), Mark Hoffman-Davis (SYC) and Tracy Longo (Homes for Homes), we leant into this opportunity with different perspectives, but there was consensus around one important theme – we are facing a housing supply crisis.
And when supply is low or non-existent, we need to build and deliver more stock, and release more land to help meet market demand.
There are of course no silver bullets, but we need to get sophisticated as a state in understanding how various segments of a multi-layered property sector can accelerate the supply of purpose-built student accommodation, retirement living options for senior Australians, affordable urban infill and suburban dwellings by ensuring tax, planning and investment attraction levers are structured in a way that encourages sustainable growth.
Some of the levers controlling supply and demand are beyond the traditional remit of State and Local Governments. What is not beyond our capacity, however, is our ability to collaborate the way we have done with this initiative to bring politicians, industry and property stakeholders to the table to discuss solutions and the best path forward.
Various long-held Property Council advocacy priorities have been addressed and embraced through this landmark forum, including repurposing aged commercial buildings into residential offerings, doubling the CBD’s residential population, and relaxing the construction code. Treasurer Mullighan’s passion to address blockages in these areas is strongly welcomed.
This forum was broadcast through The Advertiser’s online news platform, in addition to rolling and sustained news and editorial coverage throughout the paper itself and can be accessed here.
As our members know, property provides shelter for people, but it’s also an investment asset class that helps generate nest eggs and familial wealth. For this reason, what we don’t need is interventionist and cynical policy-making that punishes and discourages investment by those who fund supply – we need progressive policy-making that encourages more supply when we need it most.
And while the Property Council voice is strong, it is amplified when our members bring their expertise and insights to the discussion, outlining real and potential consequences of ill-informed decision-making, and for this we extend our thanks and appreciation for once again jumping head-first into this great initiative.
Given Premier Peter Malinauskas recently forecast 10,000 defence-related jobs on the employment horizon, the question naturally arises: where will these workers and their families be housed if housing shortage is already acute?
Unlocking adaptive reuse of office space to supply residential outcomes is therefore only one piece of the puzzle, because it certainly doesn’t provide a solution to the challenges in the ‘here and now’.
However, what must be stressed is the appetite for solutions, which spreads beyond any perceived sectoral self-interest, it now extends in a very meaningful sense to a State Government willing to tackle some big challenges in partnership with South Australia’s biggest industry – property.