Australia’s housing system is failing to deliver a sufficient supply of affordable homes and wider affordability pressures are affecting household wellbeing. A national strategic framework is needed to address these failures. By integrating and enhancing the public subsidies, financial settings, policy levers and programs that exist across the three levels of government, a national framework for housing will drive outcomes across the continuum of housing needs and help deliver long-term growth of affordable housing supply.

• Strong political leadership must advance holistic strategies for housing and affordable housing supply, ideally leading to longer term and bipartisan positions, supported by bureaucratic expertise.
• All levels of government can contribute within a national framework, common vision and purpose, with specific strategies developed and implemented by state/territorial and local governments to address their different housing pressures.
• A key focus of these strategies should be to drive wider supply agendas through an expanded affordable housing industry able to operate counter cyclically, maximising the value of public investment and contributing to more stable housing production over time.
• Secure and long-term finance, including adequate public subsidies, are essential to enable the affordable housing sector to address the scale of Australia’s unmet housing need and provide wider benefits to the housing system.
• States should enable greater use of inclusionary planning mechanisms to be tailored to local market conditions, supported by evidence of local housing need.