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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.
The Housing Industry Association (HIA) opposes the proposed minimum tax on discretionary trusts and the associated Excluded Election Trust (EET) regime.
In April 2026 an order requiring primary and secondary parties in road transport contractual chains to review and adjust transport rates fortnightly to recover increased fuel costs was handed down by the FWC. This requirement switched off automatically in the week ending 5 June 2026, when the weekly average national terminal gate diesel price fell below $2.00 per litre but did not revoke the order. HIA breaks down what this means for your business.
HIA supports fair treatment of young workers and recognises the importance of appropriate superannuation coverage. However, HIA opposes the Bill as drafted due to a number of legal and technical issues, primarily the impact on small business builders. Read more about HIA's submission to the Federal Senate's Economic Legislation Committee here.
Tasmania's home builders have marked National Tradies Day by putting the case for a trade career to young Tasmanians, saying the trades offer one of the strongest pathways in the state to secure work, real money from day one, and a career that technology is far more likely to help than replace.