Thank you Chair and Senators for the opportunity to appear today on behalf of the Housing Industry Association.

I am joined by Julie Durand, State General Manager South Australia for Burbank Homes. Burbank Homes is one of Australia's largest residential builders, operating across Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT. Through Burbank Group, the company also has deep experience delivering social, affordable and non-market housing through partnerships with governments and community housing providers.

HIA's central proposition to this Inquiry is that Australia needs more homes across every point of the housing continuum. That means more social housing, more community housing, more affordable housing, more private rental housing and more home ownership opportunities.

A shortage anywhere in the housing continuum creates pressure everywhere else. When fewer households can access home ownership, more remain in the rental market. When rental affordability deteriorates, demand for affordable housing grows. And when affordable housing becomes increasingly constrained, additional pressure is placed on community housing and social housing systems.

That is why HIA encourages the Committee to view social, affordable and non-market housing through a housing supply lens. While the objective is social, the delivery task is fundamentally one of housing supply.

These homes rely on the same land, workforce, materials, finance and construction capacity as every other home being delivered. Increasing social housing supply is not simply a question of allocating funding. It is also about ensuring Commonwealth funding, procurement frameworks, accreditation requirements and delivery models are structured to maximise participation from capable builders and developers and remove unnecessary barriers to delivery.

HIA supports continued investment in social housing, including through the Housing Australia Future Fund. The residential building industry is cyclical by nature, and one of the benefits of a long-term program such as the HAFF is its capacity to provide a more consistent pipeline of work, helping smooth fluctuations in demand and support workforce and industry capacity over time.

The HAFF's objective of delivering 55,000 social and affordable homes over five years equates to around 11,000 homes each year. Viewed through a housing supply lens, which is an achievable and realistic task for Australia's residential building industry.

The challenge is not whether the industry can build the homes. The challenge is ensuring funding arrangements, procurement frameworks, accreditation requirements, allocation models, project approvals and delivery settings are structured to efficiently convert funding commitments into completed homes. This is where the rubber hits the road.

Burbank's experience highlights an important opportunity for Commonwealth housing programs. While widely recognised as a major residential builder, the company has also successfully delivered social, affordable and non-market housing outcomes through partnerships with government and the community housing sector. Australia already has a substantial pool of experienced residential builders and developers capable of delivering social, affordable and market housing. Many have extensive experience delivering projects under state-based housing schemes and partnership models yet can struggle to participate in Commonwealth-supported programs because of the way those programs are structured.

Future programs should be designed to better harness this existing industry capability rather than relying predominantly on a relatively small group of large apartment developers. This is particularly important in regional, outer suburban and growth areas, where detached homes, duplexes, townhouses and low-rise developments can often deliver social housing outcomes more quickly and in a form that better reflects local community needs. While these projects may not deliver the same economies of scale as a large metropolitan apartment development, they can make a substantial contribution to social housing supply, support local jobs and regional economies, and help translate funding commitments into more homes on the ground.

For this reason, HIA's recommendations to this Inquiry focus on improving delivery outcomes through planning reform, faster infrastructure provision, activation of surplus government land, procurement reform, reduced administrative duplication and long-term funding certainty. We also believe greater support should be given to innovation and modern methods of construction, which have the potential to improve productivity, shorten delivery timeframes and help address workforce constraints across the housing sector.

We also see opportunities to improve the HAFF by focusing less on funding announcements and more on homes completed and occupied, while creating greater opportunities for local builders to participate in the delivery of social housing.

Importantly, HIA does not support mandatory housing quotas as the primary mechanism for delivering social housing. Governments are more likely to achieve better outcomes through incentive-based approaches that improve project feasibility and increase overall housing supply, including density bonuses, infrastructure support, concessional finance and fast-tracked approvals.

Ultimately, Australia's builders stand ready to build more homes. The Committee's challenge is how to create the conditions that allow more homes to be delivered. Success should be measured not by announcements or allocations, but by more homes commenced, completed and occupied across the housing continuum.

Thank you and I look forward to assisting the Committee with its inquiry.

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