Subdivide and conquer

. acknowledges that there will be an ongoing need for more suburban development.

Recent research by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute has shown that increasingly employment is relocating to the suburbs, effectively reducing people's journey to work and associated traffic congestion and pollution.

Well planned suburban communities need not be "infrastructure badlands" in the "boondocks".

Many of the newer suburban communities in southeast Queensland are well serviced with access to golf courses, employment opportunities and other recreation that many inner city residents would envy.

Interest rates are also an issue in the complex housing affordability picture, as are the taxes and charges that local governments are rapidly adding to the cost of a block of land.

Already these local government charges are more than $50,000 a block in parts of the Gold Coast. How the infrastructure needed in new and infill areas is funded and repaid is crucial to improving the access of young people in particular into the housing market. Adding $50,000 to their mortgage repayments is not the answer.

Power companies have been able to deliver urban infrastructure to new communities without the need for up-front contributions to the cost of building new power stations with all residential users facing the same prices for electricity. The same funding and pricing principles can be applied to most infrastructure needed in new areas.

Federal, state and local governments and the development industry arguing over who is to blame for the housing affordability crisis will not solve the problem. Co-ordinated action is needed across a broad front of inter-related issues.

If a solution is not worked on and quickly, southeast Queensland will surely end up in the same parlous economic condition that Sydney is in as a result of prolonged periods of unaffordable land and housing: businesses are moving out and the economy is stagnating.

They have been moving to southeast Queensland but if our housing continues to be unaffordable they will quickly be looking elsewhere.

Unfortunately for potential home buyers, they are a very small part of the voting population at any one election and the majority of the community benefits from the higher home prices that are squeezing the first home buyers out of the market.