Doorstop interview with Housing Industry Association - Parliament House, Canberra

JOCELYN MARTIN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, HOUSING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION: Good morning, everyone. I’m Jocelyn Martin and I’m the managing director of the Housing Industry Association. Thank you for joining us here today ahead of the National Tradies Day on Friday, and for the release of our report on trades. I’d like to thank and acknowledge Minister Andrew Giles for being here, and also for his support of some of the issues around trades that we experience in residential construction. We’re here today because the report that we’re releasing outlines the problems facing homebuilding, and also skilled trades. Importantly, we’ve got a series of actions that we need to undertake in our industry if we are going to build the homes that Australia needs. Some of the things that this report recommends are around elevating our status of our trades. We need to actually make sure that careers advisors, that parents are all encouraging of students when they’re making choices whether to take a university pathway or to take a TAFE pathway.

We need to work hard on attracting apprentices and retention of apprentices. We know that apprentice retention hasn’t been as high as we’d like, and that’s on the industry as much as it is on initiatives that retain apprentices. We need mentoring programs, for instance, that help young people enter into the world of work and manage their study as well. We need to support builders and those who train our workforce. We’ve been very grateful to the Government for their support for our employers, and to recognise that the relationship for apprentices is one between the student, the trainings, RTO, and also with the employers. So that support for apprentices’ hosts is really, really important.

We need to strengthen school to trade pathways. We need to make sure that school-based apprenticeship schemes are widely supported across the country, and that students get a chance to experience what it’s like to actually work in construction. And we need to invest in our workforce capacity. We need to make sure that the pathways are there not just through apprenticeships, but through our skilled migration pathways as well. With the Government’s ambitious targets, if we are not able to meet our capacity through our skilled workforce, then we will not build the homes that Australia needs.

This Friday is National Tradies Day, and that’s an opportunity for us to recognise those, quite frankly, very valuable people in our community that do things around our own homes, but also more importantly are the workforce that are going to build the homes that we need. Thank you. Now, I’d like to pass over to Minister Giles for some comments.

ANDREW GILES, MINISTER FOR SKILLS AND TRAINING: Thanks very much, Jocelyn. It's great to be standing with you to get in a bit early to recognise the importance of National Tradies Day, and to deliver a really clear message, that there has never been a better time than right now to pick up the tools and become a tradie, particularly if you're interested in building those homes for Australians. And I'm really pleased as we think about this very significant report that the HIA have put together that in 14 months of our Key Apprenticeship Program, supporting apprentices into the housing trades, we have now seen 38,948 individuals sign up, sign up to play their part in building a career for themselves but also building homes for Australians. And I think that's a symbol of our commitment to the work that really has been called out in this report that the HIA have put together, starting with a cultural commitment that I've been really keen on emphasising as the Minister for Skills and Training, that we really do need a parity of esteem between university pathways and vocational pathways.

We've got to recognise the great jobs and great contribution that an apprenticeship or another vocational pathway leads, and to recognise that there's huge demand right out there and right now in so many parts of our labour market, none more important than building homes, for those vocational pathways. So many of the other issues that are raised in the five recommendations that this report contains go to some of the themes of our Government's work. Opening up pathways into the trades through things like Free TAFE and our designated construction stream in the Free TAFE program. We’ve now seen around 73,000 free TAFE enrolments in construction related courses.

Jocelyn talked about the importance of skilled migration pathways. I'm really pleased that we've seen record numbers of construction visas issued under the Albanese Labor Government, and we've put in targeted investments to ensure that skills are recognised more quickly and that gap training, where needed, can be delivered more effectively. Jocelyn’s report also talks about that pathway out of school, and I think it's really encouraging to see a greater uptake of school-based apprenticeships but also an increased focus on the pathways from school into an apprenticeship or another career in the building trades. We know that we've made really big strides when it comes to the workforce challenges about meeting our ambitious housing goals but also that other side, doing more to enable more Australians to see themselves doing these really important jobs, through programs like Building Women's Careers to recognise that women have been underrepresented in some of the- and most indeed of the careers associated with housing construction.

To think also about making sure that when we get someone into a trade, we've got to do more to support them to complete them, dealing with those cultural issues, and recognising through programs like the Key Apprenticeship Program that there is a journey that we need to walk with the apprentice and their employer on to make sure that they reach their potential and we can reach our national potential, in particular by building homes for Australians. So I'm really pleased to be standing with the HIA in the context of this important report, and our wider goals when it comes to building the workforce needed to support our ambitions in the construction sector. Are there any questions?

JOURNALIST: Minister, one of the barriers for becoming a tradie is the wages that apprentices are paid, especially those people wanting to have a career change later in life and become a mature age apprentice. There’s a couple of proposals out there at the moment, including one from Master Builders for a Commonwealth payroll tax rebate on apprenticeship wages, another idea being quoted as raising the tax-free threshold for apprentice tradies. Are these kinds of ideas the Government’s open to to ensure that there are enough tradies in the pipeline?

GILES: I'm concerned and I have been concerned to look at what are the barriers stopping someone from pursuing a career or in particular carrying on with their apprenticeship. And we know the cost of living pressures loom large across all of the Australian but particularly for people who are undertaking apprenticeship. And that's really why we've put in place the Key Apprenticeship Program, offering a payment to employers, recognising the cost to them, particularly small employers, of taking on the apprentice, but also recognising that over the course of an apprenticeship, cost pressures do arise. So that payment of $10,000, first at six months with $2,000 and another $2,000 at 12 months, is a recognition of those pressures but also, I hope, a statement of the value we attach to the pathway. Again, we’ll keep listening to the voices of apprentices, keep listening to their employers and industry representatives, working with state and territory governments who also have a role to play here to make sure we’re doing absolutely everything we can to support more people into and through that apprenticeship pathway, while of course being conscious of the fiscal pressures of the Government.

JOURNALIST: A question to Jocelyn, you spoke a lot about the role of tradies in ensuring we get the new homes that we need. What about the role of tax settings? And, perhaps, is there a need to revisit the federal Budget’s tax changes to encourage more new homes to be built?

MARTIN: So we started 2026 in a very good place in construction, and I think a lot of the work that the Federal Government had done to date around skills in particular, but also around working on the National Construction Code and the environmental protections, we’re starting to build confidence in the industry. And I guess after that we had a couple of interest rate rises, and then we had conflict in the Gulf which impacted materials prices. And so when the Government announced the tax changes in the federal budget, I mean, to be honest, our first reaction was why now? Things were starting to pick up. And what we’ve seen since then has been a pretty rapid decline in all markers around new homes and construction sales and construction activity. Top that off, I suppose, with changes to limited recourse borrowing arrangements around self-managed super funds taking a cohort of investors out of the market, and also a bit of a kick to small business around the potential for trust changes, you've really got, I suppose, a situation which is actually now putting the brakes on construction. So in terms of whether we would love to see those tax changes reverse, I'm not sure that that's actually going to happen. But I do think that we have to acknowledge that that has had a significant impact on the sector and a significant slowdown towards the target of 1.2 million homes.

JOURNALIST: Would you at least like to see sort of a carve out for new builds introduced to that so that limited recourse borrowing can still continue for [indistinct] adding to supply?

MARTIN: So there is a carve out for new builds at the moment for the tax changes. But what we've seen is if the investors leave the market, that impacts the whole sector. And that, if existing homes pricewise become more attractive, the addition to supply through new homes is also impacted. But I guess when we look at the changes to the self-managed super fund and the limited recourse borrowing. it certainly would help for there to be a focus on new homes and for borrowing to be available on new homes. Investors are a really, really important part of the market. They provide much needed rental accommodation, and rental accommodation is at a significant low- available rental accommodation is at a significant low at the moment. And when it's at a low, it's demand and supply. It puts pressure on prices. And so If we can find a way to maintain those investors in the market through concessions around new homes, it would have to help.

JOURNALIST: Minister, would you like right of reply? Is Jocelyn wrong here?

GILES: My colleague the Housing Minister was asked about this earlier today, so I'd reiterate some of the points that she made. Obviously what we are seeing is a response to a housing market that has been broken, and our focus has been about ensuring that young Australians can enjoy the benefits of home ownership. We are seeing new home approvals go up. We are seeing the changes that we have sought to put in place take effect, as Minister O'Neil made clear this morning, and I'd reiterate those remarks.

JOURNALIST: But when you hear the industry that looks after construction, buildings, when they’re saying that the tax changes haven’t helped in terms of rents, new home investments, how can you stand here and genuinely defend the changes?

GILES: I think we are seeing a difference when it comes to new home investments because of, well, because of a range of factors. There are obviously going to be differences of perspectives here between the HIA and the Government on some issues. I understand that, I respect the view they've put. We are making no apology for trying to reshape the housing market to ensure that young Australians can get a foothold in.

JOURNALIST: Just another question for Jocelyn. Obviously the focus here is on developing skills through apprentices and the domestic workforce. But what do you see the necessary amount of skilled migrants that the industry needs?

MARTIN: So on Friday, HIA will appear at the hearing around migration, and obviously we are following the debate closely about what the ideal numbers are. To be honest, our focus is not necessarily on a magic number, it is actually on having a system that actually works for the industry and that the industry can rely on it. What our businesses are seeing at the moment is, what we see as potentially trying to manage the net overseas migration number, is targeting a bit of a slowdown in offshore processing of skilled migration visas. And that actually then puts pressure on business that actually means that they can't plan and they can't then build the homes that we need. So what we're after, I guess, is a transparent system that can be relied on and that is consistent and that is suitable for the construction industry. A very small portion of skilled migration visas are issued to construction workers at the moment. And I think it's important that we delve deeper into why that might be and what are the barriers to that.

JOURNALIST: What impact would cutting the ability of skilled migrants to bring family members over on visas have? What impact would that have on employers’ ability to attract workers?

MARTIN: You mean –

JOURNALIST: Cutting family visas for skilled migrants – what impact would that have on employers to attract workers?

MARTIN: I think at the moment, the examples that we have are about temporary skilled work visas in construction. And those are people who may not necessarily bring their families over to work. They are just people who are coming for that work. They stay for the duration of the visa and then they tend to go home to their families.