00:00As the Productivity Commission showed in its recent report on construction productivity,
00:06builders face a thicket of regulations, whether it be the construction code, whether it be land
00:10use planning controls that make it hard to build in our major cities. These are major reasons why
00:14we face a housing shortage in Australia today. And it's why housing in large part has become
00:20more unaffordable and less attainable to Australians. And this is an urgent national
00:24priority to get more housing built as quickly as we can. The government has a target of 1.2
00:29million homes over five years that they're aiming to build. They're falling well short of that at
00:33the moment. And this is hopefully one step that will lead to an acceleration in the pace of new
00:37housing construction. It should make some difference at the margin, but really the way to make that
00:41difference, it'll mean fewer new changes or weekly changes that builders will have to deal with
00:46on those timelines that you've outlined. It means that the existing code will remain in place,
00:52which means builders can have more confidence that if they're undertaking innovations,
00:56that they satisfy the existing code, that they won't run afoul of future changes to the code if
01:02they're building those practices into their building models. But it doesn't necessarily change
01:06what's being built in Australia in the next six months to a year or two years, because the existing
01:12code remains in place. As we've heard at the roundtable, it is complex. That code remains in place.
01:18I think the other part of this that is important is the government will do a review of the code itself,
01:22and that's probably the more substantive change in the long run to work out whether there are aspects
01:27of the regulatory settings that are adding costs that don't add value that mean we get fewer homes
01:33built and those homes take longer to build.
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