Sustainability making for unaffordability

While the Sustainable Cities report suggests opportunities to pursue more consistent building ratings tools, it does not recognise market realities or the need for states and territories to recoup their development costs for equivalent state-based tools.

HIA welcomes any measures aimed at clearing the sustainability confusion our members face day in and day out. In the more than two years it has taken to produce the Sustainable Cities report, state and territory governments have gone their own way, pursuing disparate sustainability measures.

The cost impact of these differing regulatory regimes has been largely ignored in the quest of the states and territories to be the environmental beachhead. The nightmare intensifies when local governments come into the fray, with environmental regulations sometimes varying from one street to another.

Housing affordability remains an unbridgeable chasm for many Australians and HIA believes the Sustainable Cities report has done little or nothing to close this gap. Sustainability must embrace affordability if Australians are to enjoy a successful future.