16 June2026

The Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC) welcomes the opportunity to provide input to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into housing supply regulation. ASBEC supports efforts to increase housing supply and affordability.

ASBEC believes that improving housing supply requires governments to focus on the entire housing delivery system. Improvements across multiple parts of the delivery chain are likely to deliver greater housing outcomes than focusing on any single regulatory bottleneck in isolation.

In particular, ASBEC recommends that governments:

• adopt a whole-of-system approach to housing delivery that focuses on converting approvals into completed homes (Recommendation 1)
• streamline planning and approval systems through risk-based and nationally consistent approaches (Recommendations 2 & 3)
• support modern methods of construction and prefabrication (Recommendation 4)
• prioritise housing-enabling infrastructure, including electricity network capacity and other last-mile infrastructure (Recommendation 5)
• invest in spatially explicit strategic plans in alignment with national urban policy principles, with clear housing targets for well-located areas (Recommendation 6)
• make all-electric developments the default for new housing precincts (Recommendation 7)
• reduce duplication across consultation, assessment and approval processes (Recommendation 8)
• maintain resilience and avoid development patterns that create long-term productivity, insurance and fiscal costs (Recommendation 9).

Together, these reforms can improve productivity, accelerate housing delivery and support the creation of more sustainable, resilient and efficient communities.

Read the full submission here