HOUSING TRACKER #4
The National Disgrace of Uncoordinated Infrastructure Planning in Australian Housing Delivery
Executive Summary
Australia’s housing crisis is not due to lack of land or funding promises — it is due to a total failure of consolidated infrastructure planning. Despite Labor’s commitment to 1.2 million homes and the Coalition’s 500,000 home pledge, the sector is tracking well behind the 240,000-per-year build rate required, achieving only 43,000 homes per quarter . This shortfall is not solely about labor and materials — it is because no one knows what’s available, ready, or feasible at a block-by-block level across Australia.
1. The Deep Infrastructure Blind Spot
Critical services such as flood basin mapping, stormwater drainage, sewerage pumping and treatment, potable water capacity, electricity supply, and telecommunications availability are often not known or not disclosed during the planning and land release process.
There is no national dashboard linking zoning and subdivision approval to actual availability of these core services at the parcel level.
Examples of systemic infrastructure fragmentation:
Sewer capacity: Sydney Water's 2023 planning document indicates that multiple Sydney growth precincts are already operating near or at sewer main capacity. New developments require headworks upgrades not accounted for in developer plans.
Water supply: Seqwater reports that the Gold Coast’s water storage levels have dropped below 60%, triggering Level 1 water restrictions in 2024 . Yet no linkage exists between this data and urban planning approvals.
Flood overlays: Councils such as Logan and Ipswich in Queensland still issue development approvals on marginal floodplain land, exposing future homeowners to insurance risks and physical danger, as seen in the 2022 Queensland floods .
Electricity grid: New South Wales’ Endeavour Energy stated in 2023 that “feeder line saturation” is a bottleneck for both EV charging infrastructure and new developments in Western Sydney.
NBN and telecoms: While some land releases advertise fibre readiness, the ACCC 2024 report confirms that 17% of new homes are still being connected to legacy copper or wireless networks.
2. Bureaucratic Bloat and Fragmentation