Peter Tulip

I mean, many people, many of the submissions to the inquiry said that the solution was

to our housing problems is for Australia to be building more high density, particularly in our inner cities, in the suburbs of our major cities.

And so that is really the solution.

The federal government doesn't actually control density of land use, but it can be encouraging the states and local governments to be building more.

So at the moment, the federal government just gives a lot of money to states and local governments unconditionally.

And we think that it should be putting a housing requirement on that money.

So that instead of just giving them a big grant of X million dollars, we'll give you $1,000 per house that you build.

And tying the money to actual progress in housing development will greatly improve the incentives of local and state governments to approve more housing.

Yeah, the cities are a job-creating machine.

That's where the high wages are.

That's where the jobs are.

We have this possible problem or this issue of crowding because cities are so successful in generating employment.

That's why everyone wants to live here.

In terms of local amenities, sure, it would be lovely to live in

grafton or the mornington peninsula or some other rural town but the reason we're here is because that's where the economic activity is there's a lot of research finding that concentrating people together boosts productivity improves technology and it leads to high wages

Our sense is that the key problem with housing affordability is, as I say, planning restrictions.

We need to be building more housing, and that means we need to get the planning restrictions that prevent that out of the way to allow apartment buildings to go up and to allow detached houses to be converted into medium and high density.

Unfortunately, those restrictions are largely the responsibility of state governments, or in some states, local governments.

We also think the federal government should be channeling more money into easing planning restrictions.

So it should be creating incentives for state and local governments to build more.