Dutton’s housing plan sparks copycat claims

Senior ministers have slammed the Coalition’s newly unveiled plan to fix Australia’s housing crisis as being “pretty much exactly the same plan” as the current Labor government’s.

In a bid to win the housing affordability battle at next year’s election, Peter Dutton has pledged to plough $5bn into developing infrastructure that he said would help build half a million new homes.

Announcing the long-awaited plan on Saturday, the Opposition Leader said that developments have been “stalled” across the country “due to a lack of funding for essential enabling infrastructure.”

But Industrial Relation Minister Murray Watt said the plan, including the sum of money, was almost identical to work the government was already doing.

“It’s pretty revealing that after all of this time the only plan that Peter Dutton has put forward is pretty much exactly the same plan that we’ve had operating for months,” he told the ABC.

“We’ve already put out there pretty much the same amount of money to do exactly the same thing as what Peter Dutton announced yesterday.

“In fact, that money from us is already rolling out to assist state and local governments to do the kind of infrastructure works that Peter Dutton has just announced.”

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher also said the Coalition was “essentially copying” Labor policy and the government was already working with councils and state governments to clear infrastructure hurdles slowing “greenfield development”.

She told Sky News there were “constraints” on “

“So we’ve already got a program that does that,” Senator Gallagher said.

The Coalition’s plan would hand out grants a mix of grants and concessional loans to invest in shovel-ready infrastructure and speed up developments of greenfield sites across Australia.

Core to the proposal is its “use it or lose it” approach, which would force stakeholders to progress with approved sites within 12 months.

Opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume said this was the key difference to the government’s plan.

“The program that Labor have identified there, that Katy Gallagher mentioned, is in fact very different,” Senator Hume told Sky News.

“That $1.5bn, $1bn of that’s just gone directly to the states and has stalled and the rest is for plans, not for shovel-ready projects.

“This is about additionality. 500,000 additional homes that would not have already been built.”

She also said that the Coalition’s plan to cut back migration and impose a temporary ban on foreign investors would “free up around 300,000 homes.”

But that figure grossly contradicted the number put out by the Coalition, which said the changes would free up around 100,000 homes.