State budgets tinkering around the edges of our housing crisis

This adds billions to these large developments that have to be outlaid before a single house block has been sold, so only really large developers can undertake the project, and they have to load the costs onto the house buyers.

If the land is not in large parcels, by definition it is fragmented.

Here the problem is that unless you can amalgamate an impossibly large number of properties, no one can afford to pay for the trunk infrastructure required to unlock the land, so it remains sterilised from development.

These infrastructure costs should be regarded as an investment by the state in the development.

As they are currently structured, the developer passes the cost onto the buyer who pays the capital cost upfront for facilities that they will then be charged a fee, incorporating a provision for depreciation of the asset, which means they pay twice over for using infrastructure.

Our states must become competitive again

What this country desperately needs is for one state government to implement a revised tax system that doesn't penalise developers or new home buyers, and returns us to the competitive development markets that we had in states like Queensland as little as 30 years ago. Story continues below advertisement

This would re-introduce competition into the market as smaller developers could compete against mega-developers.