Alan Kohler

Alan Collar here with That's Business and it's been a big couple of weeks for housing policy.

So this week we've got Susan Lloyd Hurwitz, the Chair of the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, created as part of the National Housing Accord in 2022.

Susan Lloyd Hurwitz was chief executive of Mirvac, the property development company, for 10 years.

So she knows more than most about what it takes to get more housing and what demand looks like.

In her new job, she's supervising the collection of housing demand and supply data.

doing forecasts and keeping an eye on how the Housing Accord target of 1.2 million homes in five years from the middle of 2024 is going.

The answer is that they're behind, according to the council, and won't make the deadline.

But perhaps the most fundamental issue, and we get onto this in the interview, is will housing actually get more affordable or does Australia have to get used to the way it is now?

That is...

will the affordability crisis turn into a permanent crisis?

Well, to answer that and more, here's Susan Lloyd Hurwitz, Chair of the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council.

G'day, Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz.

Thanks for joining us on That's Business.

It's a pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

Now, there have been a lot of developments in the past week on housing policy.

Are you surprised that it's now become a focus of both major parties?

Both major parties are now talking about demand as well as supply.

Is that a good thing now?

And has it taken too long to get to that?