Bombshell report finds Anthony Albanese's promise to build 1.2million new homes by 2029 'cannot be met'

By ASHLEY NICKEL, NEWS REPORTER, AUSTRALIA Published: 15:52, 9 June 2026 | Updated: 15:55, 9 June 2026 A new research paper by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute has called out Labor's plan to build 1.2-million homes by 2029 as a pipe dream. Report leader associate professor Andrea Sharam from RMIT on Tuesday said Australia's construction industry doesn't have the capacity to fulfill the demand. Even with massive systematic change, her report co-written with 19 other researchers found the Albanese Government's new homes goal 'cannot be met'.  The research spanned 18 months and looked at detached and high-rise housing construction sectors. It found the rate at which detached homes are being built has barely changed in the last 45 years, despite the population significantly increasing in that time and multiple boom and bust cycles. The paper also claimed apartments are taking even longer to build.  One of the biggest risk to the construction sector was market volatility, she said. 'During booms costs spike, labour shortages hit, supply chains are disrupted and timelines blow out,' Dr Sharam said. The report said the Albanese Government's new-homes goal 'cannot be met' after spending 18 months analysing Australia's construction industry (pictured is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese) The report found new home completions have remained stagnant over the previous four decades 'Booms also draw in marginal operators and under-skilled workers, increase pressure to cut corners, and disrupt work scheduling creating task queues. 'Downturns meanwhile cause some permanent loss of labour, wage suppression, loss of knowledge and innovation, and businesses leaving the sector.' Data showed the construction of detached homes jumped by 50,000 in busy years and dropped by 20,000 during quiet years.  Apartments were even riskier with a boom in the 2010s seeing a 300 per cent increase in construction, following by a 30 per cent decline due to tighter regulation and withdrawal of Chinese investment.  'The failure of the detached housebuilding industry to lift output is explained by builders taking on work that they cannot realistically deliver during booms.  'This creates a backlog. Backlogs are not fully cleared during subsequent downturns, and hence builders are already constrained at the beginning of the next up cycle.' When all the above is combined with a very fragmented workforce - mostly made up of small and medium contractors - it severely limits the output of homes. 'Larger firms are generally more efficient than small ones, but small and medium builders deliver half of apartments and most detached homes,' Dr Sharam said. The report claimed severe market volatility and obstacles to productivity has seen Australia's detached home rate remain fairly steady for the last 40 years, rather than keep up with demand 'Smaller builders rely heavily on temporary contractor teams that disband after each project, breaking the skills transfer chain.  'When downturns forced layoffs, labour capacity was constrained when the market recovered.' Dr Sharam, and 18 other researchers, used the paper to call for a overhaul of the sector's productivity by looking at the issues affecting the whole sector.  'The National Housing Accord aims to build 1.2-million homes by 2029, it will take significant system-level reforms to get us there,' Dr Sharam said.  The paper had eight core recommendations for fixing construction, though even with those all adopted it was unlikely Labor would meet its 1.2-million home goal.  Among other steps, it called for the development of a nation-wide productivity strategy, investment in social housing during market downturns, the creation of a nation-wide construction code to replace jurisdictional rules. Other measures addressed worker attraction and retention, the inclusion of provision addressing the changing cost of raw materials in contracts, better support for research and development to increase productivity, more sourcing of supplies onshore and a move toward bigger firms over small contractors. 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