Housing supply and urban planning reform: the recent Australian experience, 2003–2012

This paper examines the emergence in Australia of housing supply as a key consideration in urban policy and reform. Australia has experienced declining housing affordability over the past decade, and sluggish housing construction since the GFC. As in many other nations, there has been a growing emphasis on land use planning as the major supply constraint, resonating with theoretical debates about the legitimacy of planning and development control in the context of an ongoing neo-liberal campaign for deregulation across the Australian public sector. Through a detailed analysis of Australian government and industry discourse between 2003 and 2012, this paper finds the arguments for planning as the chief cause of housing market problems weak and contradictory, and heavily reflect the views of industry lobby groups. While not absolving planning as a potential supply side constraint, ongoing change to the planning system itself creates uncertainty and distracts from the range of positive policy levers that might be used to promote housing supply and affordable homes for low- and moderate-income groups.