Centre set to build homes

FNQ to host housing factory

FAR North Queensland will have its own QBuild Rapid Accommodation and Apprenticeships Centre to build homes and transport them to permanent locations, Public Works Minister Mick de Brenni announced on Tuesday.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk opened the QBuild Rapid Accommodation and Apprenticeship Centre at Eagle Farm on Monday.

The site will be used to build prefabricated homes to be transported across the state for government employee accommodation.

She said it would free up housing supply in remote and regional areas, and has set a target of 80 prefabricated homes to be delivered by June 30 this year.

Mr de Brenni said at full production the Far North site would build 26 homes a year.

“This facility will be incredibly important, especially for our Cape and Gulf communities, where the wet season creates significant challenges for building,” Mr de Brenni said.

“We can mitigate all those issues, by prefabricating homes and components in the factory.

“We can deliver homes quicker, with better value for money.”

State MP for Barron River Craig Crawford said the location of the factory was still to be determined.

“We’re still scoping the sites where the facility and the 26 new homes a year will be built,” Mr Crawford said.

“But this is terrific news for homegrown jobs, employing 39 tradies and apprentices, and seven support staff.”

He said it showed the government was looking at every possible option to ease housing pressures in Cairns and across the Far North.

Following a meeting on Tuesday to examine the progress of initiatives from last year’s Housing Summit, the government announced developers who built affordable homes would receive tax concessions including land tax slashed in half.

Owners of build-to-rent projects will have their land tax bill slashed in half for 20 years if they make one in every 10 units an “affordable home”.

A $28m boost to the state government’s housing response package was announced, to fund emergency hotel rooms across the state.

The government also aims to limit rent increases to once a year, but it is unlikely rent will be capped.

LNP housing spokesman Tim Mander questioned what the government had achieved following the housing summit.

“They promised that more people would be in granny flats. There’s no evidence that there’s one extra person in a granny flat,” he said.