Australia is not short of housing targets. What it lacks is a delivery system capable of meeting them.
The numbers tell the story. The country is now more than 112,000 homes behind the National Housing Accord target of 1.2 million by 2029. Over the same period, housing construction productivity has fallen 53 per cent since 1994–95, while economy-wide labour productivity rose 49 per cent.
This is not a planning problem. It is not a migration problem. It is a delivery model problem.
Traditional on-site construction has no mechanism for productivity to compound. Every additional home requires a proportionate increase in labour, equipment and site supervision. Manufacturing works in the opposite direction — a factory carries fixed costs, but the marginal cost of one more panel is small. Average costs fall as volume rises.
That is why manufactured housing reaches 84 per cent of detached homes in Sweden, while Australia sits under 5 per cent.
But prefabrication does not scale on its own. It requires three conditions the market cannot provide by itself.
First, consistent regulation. A compliant component certified in one jurisdiction still has to be re-proven in the next. Eight states and territories operate eight separate approval systems. For manufacturers, this means duplicating documentation for identical products — an estimated $50,000 to $100,000 and three to six months per national rollout.
Second, finance and insurance that reflect real risk. Traditional construction finance assumes progress is visible on site. Modular construction creates value in a factory, before the building is fixed to land — and the framework struggles to value an asset that isn’t there yet. Resolving whether a manufactured module is a product or a construction work would unlock lending and underwriting at scale.
Third, a dependable pipeline. Manufacturers cannot justify investing in factory capacity against project-by-project procurement. They need multi-year demand signals — the kind that only governments, as the largest customers for social and affordable housing, can provide.
These are the three barriers that the National MMC Luncheon Forum will confront on 22 October at Crown Melbourne, bringing together 400 industry leaders, policymakers and researchers.
Federal Housing Minister Clare O’Neil will deliver the keynote address. NSW Minister for Housing Rose Jackson will open the Pipeline Solutions Panel. Three panels — Regulatory Reform, Finance & Insurance, and Pipeline Solutions — will each produce specific recommendations for a formal Resolution delivered to the Minister on the day.
This is not another conference. It is a working session designed to produce something the Minister can act on.
The technology exists. The designs are proven. The manufacturers are ready.
What’s missing is the national coordination to turn political will into a sustained pipeline of homes.
Tickets to the National MMC Luncheon can be booked here.
