‘Good planning, not red tape’: Opponents speak out as Gabba housing quota scrapped

The decision to scrap social and affordable housing requirements for a major Brisbane development area is a missed opportunity to meet Queensland’s ambitious housing goal, according to the state’s peak social services body.

Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie announced on Thursday that the existing requirements for developers to include 20 per cent social and affordable housing in the Woolloongabba Priority Development Area would be removed.

Bleijie said the updated plan would deliver 16,000 homes – 2000 more than the previous iteration.

During this week’s announcement – which came with the news a 17,000 arena would be built for the 2032 Olympics – Bleijie said the market had rejected the requirements.

He said the market had spoken after only three development applications were lodged under Labor’s version of the PDA.

“[There] is no point in having a document out there mandating social and affordable housing if the private sector are not going to deliver it,” he said.

In a statement, the deputy premier said the government “scrapped Labor’s unworkable red tape to better reflect the reality of development”.

Queensland Council of Social Service chief executive Aimee McVeigh disputed that labelling of the requirements.

“Including social and affordable housing targets in PDAs is not red tape, it’s good planning,” she said.

She said affordable housing requirements were an important lever for the state government to force the private sector to contribute to their “ambitious” plan of building 53,500 social housing dwellings by 2044.

“The government has an ability to intervene in the market and ensure the private sector plays their part, and through this action they’ve taken that lever away.”

McVeigh said QCOSS was consulted by the government before the requirements were scrapped.

“We have consistently provided feedback to both the former government and the current government that the inclusion of social and affordable housing targets in PDAs is really important,” she said.

Bleijie said the government was still very committed to social housing, despite Thursday’s announcement.

“The Crisafulli government has already invested a record $5.6 billion in new and social community housing, as well as the $2 billion Residential Activation Fund to help deliver on the ambitious target of 1 million homes by 2044 to ease Labor’s housing crisis,” he said.

Dr Lyndall Bryant, a property economics expert at QUT, said the move to scrap the requirement did not make sense.

“I couldn’t believe that in the middle of a housing crisis, the state government would actually remove the provisioning for social and affordable housing for land so well located to services and that meets all the criteria for housing a diverse population,” she said.

Bryant said the private sector could not be relied on to provide social housing, citing the more than 50,000 people on Queensland’s social housing waiting list.

“If you think about the reason why social housing is difficult to build, it’s because they are low-income tenants. Their rent is a portion of their income and their income is usually the dole,” she said.

Opposition housing spokeswoman Meaghan Scanlon said because the state-owned entity Economic Development Queensland was involved, social and affordable housing should have to be included.

“Our public developer should have a public responsibility to deliver outcomes like social and affordable housing,” she said.

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