Why Australia’s megaproject boom may deepen the housing crisis

August 10, 2026 — 3:30pm

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

Australia has a building plan for almost everything. We need 1.2 million new homes, new electricity transmission lines, rail and road upgrades, hospitals, schools, and the venues and transport needed for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Each ambition can be defended. Together, however, they expose a basic problem: Australia keeps announcing projects as if everyone will have their own private supply of engineers, tradies, contractors, machinery and materials. They won’t.

Infrastructure Australia says the five-year pipeline of major public projects has reached a record $242 billion. It estimates the infrastructure workforce is already short about 141,000 people and that the gap could exceed 300,000 by mid-2027. If the federal government decides to cut the immigration program, as is mooted, that figure will be even worse.

At the same time, the home-building task is slipping away. The National Housing Accord requires an average of 60,000 completed homes every quarter. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show just 43,816 were completed in the March quarter. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council expects about 980,000 homes over the accord’s five years under its early-2026 outlook, 220,000 below the target.

We often discuss the housing shortage as a problem of planning approvals, land or finance. All matter. But Australia also has a capacity problem.

Homes and megaprojects........

© The Sydney Morning Herald