Australian gov't to take steps to improve housing affordability: treasurer

Australian state governments can do more to make housing more affordable by removing unnecessary land planning regulations which will increase the supply of houses, Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison said on Monday.

Morrison said home ownerships among first time buyers could be improved by leaps and bounds if state governments did a better job at "improving planning processes and the provision of infrastructure" from the present state of affairs.

"This is not about outing anyone on notice but a call to work together," Morrison said at a luncheon speech hosted by the Urban Development Institute in Sydney.

"My Department has heard from developers about increasing development times, with one noting that it took 12 years for a recent project on the outskirts of Melbourne to go from the acquisition of vacant land to a new suburb."

"This was how long it took for the land to be rezoned and for the developer to meet the onerous hurdles required in construction," he said.

Morrison also conceded that home ownership was getting harder for any Australians to get into no matter how hard one worked to save or earn money for it.

"Home ownership rates are falling across all age cohorts, but particularly for young Australians." he said.

"Between 2002 and 2014, Australian home ownership among 25-34 year olds declined from 38.7 percent to 29.2 percent."

"That is more than 160,000 young people that would otherwise be home owners. For 35 to 44-year-olds it fell from 63.2 percent to 52.4 percent," he said.

However, Morrison added that the Federal Government was committed into getting more Australians into their own homes.

"The Government will ... be discussing with the states the potential to remove residential land use planning regulations that unnecessarily impede housing supply and are not in the broader public interest," he said.

"This will be the strong focus of my discussions at the next Council on Federal Financial Relations that I will convene in early December."

Meanwhile, Master Builders Australia in a statement had welcomed the Treasurer's announcement of a way forward to tackling housing affordability.

"Master Builders therefore strongly backs the Treasurer's focus on the removal of inefficient land use regulations that restrict housing supply and put upward pressure on house prices," Wilhelm Harnsich, chief executive of Master Builders Australia said in a statement.

"Master Builders has consistently called for the use of competition payments by the federal government to the states and territories as outlined in the Harper Review into Competition Policy 2015 and Master Builders 5 Point Steps for More Affordable Housing," Harnsich added. Enditem