Australia’s housing crisis is a failure to provide a basic human right – that of a roof over one’s head.

But it also poses a serious threat to the national and international competitiveness of our cities and coastal centres.

There’s a pattern emerging in capital cities and regional centres across the nation in which the people who teach our children, treat the sick and care for the elderly are being squeezed out.

Australia is not only battling a cost-of-living crisis, but a productivity crisis.

Governments, of all political persuasions, are making it worse by selling off prime land with the power to shape better-functioning and more productive local economies.

If essential workers can’t afford to live near centres of economic activity, it will become harder for businesses, hospitals, universities, schools and transport providers to operate.

In most of our cities, governments own surplus land parcels close to city centres and key infrastructure, including hospitals and educational institutions.

These publicly owned land banks could play an important role in safeguarding the nation’s economic future.

The economic health of cities is not an abstract or esoteric concern; it is the basis of our livelihoods and social wellbeing.

Cash-strapped governments are under pressure to simply sell these sites to the highest bidder.

State and federal governments around the country are taking a “supply, now, at any cost” approach, when what we need is a vision that sees further than the next electoral cycle.

The Queensland government recently announced it would sell a large parcel of........

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