When government projects run over, so does the price of the housing Australians so badly need. On this week’s Court of Public Opinion, Jeremy Cordeaux went after a question at the core of the affordability crisis: why is building so expensive — and why does the public sector manage to pay even more than the private one?
Government’s Share Of The Bill
The number Jeremy kept circling back to was arresting: roughly half the cost of a new home, he said, is government charges and taxes. Before construction even begins, levies, fees, approvals and imposts have already taken a large slice of the eventual price.
For those shut out of the market, that is the invisible force lifting homes beyond reach. It isn’t just land and labour — it’s the tier of government cost piled on top of both.
Paying More For Less
Odder still, Jeremy observed, is that public housing costs more to build than equivalent private housing. The very sector meant to deliver affordable homes at scale does it less efficiently than the market it exists to support.
In the remote interior, the gulf widens dramatically. Construction in Central Australia, he said, can run about 150% above comparable housing elsewhere — more than twice the cost. Distance and logistics explain part of it; much of the rest, in his view, is the familiar stack of cost and process that inflates every public build.
Up Fifty Per Cent
All of this plays out in a construction sector where costs have jumped 50% in five years, on the Master Builders Association’s figures. Jeremy pointed to the MBA chief’s plea for honesty and transparency — and the chilling detail that he had received death threats for making it.
To Jeremy, that spoke to something rotten in the industry, and pointed him toward a solution.
Restore The Referee
His remedy was to bring back the Australian Building and Construction Commission to police conduct on site. He doubts it will happen, though, while the government remains — in his words — in the CFMEU’s pocket. The cost problem, he argued, is inseparable from a governance problem.
Until the charges, the process and the on-site conduct are all faced honestly, Jeremy warned, building will stay needlessly dear — and home ownership will keep drifting out of reach for ordinary Australians.
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