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The Housing Industry Association (HIA) has released a report that warns that trade shortages present a significant threat to achieving the Housing Accord’s target of building 1.2 million homes over the next five years.
Australia does not currently have enough tradies to build the number of homes needed to house the population and take pressure off housing costs. The report titled All Hands on Deck presents a plan to grow the construction workforce and enable the Housing Accord target to be achieved.
“The residential building industry currently employs approximately 278,000 tradies across the twelve key trade occupations required for home building. The trades workforce needs to grow by at least 30 per cent to meet the Accord’s goals. That is over 83,000 additional tradies.
“To achieve the target, an average of 240,000 homes must be built annually—a level that has only been approached twice in Australia’s history.
“This means a significant boost in the number of chippies, sparkies, plumbers, brickies and concreters, to get these much-needed homes out of the ground and to lock up.
“Despite efforts to boost the domestic trades workforce, significant challenges remain. Creating career opportunities for the local workforce should be a priority, however this alone will not solve to the tradie shortage.
“Skilled migration is the other key lever that the government can pull in the short term to address the immediate shortage of tradies.
“The time for business as usual solutions has passed, and we need ‘all hands on deck’ and coordinated government actions to address the chronic shortage of tradies,” concluded Mr Murray.
HIA provided a response to the Discussion Paper on Inspection Policies for Proposed Practice Direction Updates.
The Housing Industry Association (HIA) today welcomed the City of Launceston’s decision to take its proposal to reduce ordinary working hours to 30.4 hours per week off the table at this time, recognising the importance of maintaining council capacity to support local business, housing delivery, and the broader community.
The Housing Industry Association (HIA) has today released its 2026 Planning Blueprint Scorecard, revealing a growing divide between states embracing bold reforms and those stuck in a ‘business-as-usual’ approach.
“Over the last 25 years, the price of the typical new residential lot of land in Victoria has risen more than four times faster than construction costs,” stated HIA Executive Director Keith Ryan.