Australia’s youngest housing minister happy to pay developers’ fees as Queensland races to boost supply
A Gold Coast renter who turns 31 this month, the new Queensland planning minister, Meaghan Scanlon, is a selfconfessed “Yimby”.
To Scanlon, fixing the state’s housing crisis means not only saying “yes, in my back yard”, but saying yes to a host of broader reforms too. Everything is on the table, from picking up the bill for developers’ council fees to buying old hotels to boost affordable housing stock, and trading away planning restrictions in return for cheaper homes.
“I’m pro-housing, unashamedly prohousing,” she tells Guardian Australia. “We are open for business. We want to try and unlock as much supply as we can.”
In her first few weeks at the helm of the state government’s newly merged planning, housing and local government departments, Scanlon has rolled out the beginnings of a major reform agenda including:
“Mandatory” housing targets for councils.
A $350m fund to “incentivise infill development” including paying council infrastructure fees for developers.
A pilot scheme trading away planning restrictions in return for cheaper homes.
New laws to streamline development approvals.
Announced earlier this month, the new plan has mostly snuck under the radar, attracting relatively little criticism. Scanlon believes the severity of the current housing crunch means people are more willing to accept change.
“I think most people who have kids want their kids to be able to afford a home,” she says.
“I feel optimistic that … people have got a greater appetite for change and reform than they may have had five years ago because of the urgency of the problem.”
Minister for everything with four walls
Scanlon’s career has continued a dizzying rise since she won the seat of Gaven in 2017 to become Queensland parliament’s youngest ever female representative, aged 24. She remains Labor’s only Gold Coast MP.
First appointed to cabinet in 2020 as the minister for the environment, Scanlon was promoted to housing minister in May 2023.
In December, another promotion by the then incoming premier, Steven Miles, saw her add planning, local government, and public works.
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Scanlon is now essentially the minister for everything with four walls.
In an exclusive interview with Guardian Australia, she agrees that the move from environment to housing reflected the government’s perception of a shift in the main political priority of young people.
“I think it is good having someone from my generation at the cabinet table and it brings a different perspective,” she says. “I don’t profess to speak on behalf of all young people. And I don’t think that my circumstances are the same as all young people.”
There is a reason Queenslanders young and old are worried about housing. The state is facing probably its most serious housing crisis since the Great Depression. With a rental vacancy rate of 1% in Brisbane, housing is in short supply, leaving hundreds of people sleeping rough on an average night.
For 70 years, the city relied on an apparently endless supply of empty floodplain to accommodate growth. But there are fewer and fewer opportunities to expand.
According to economists, the best approach is to roll back rules prohibiting affordable housing near transport infrastructure and jobs, restrictions that the Reserve Bank estimates add about 42% to rents in Brisbane. The strategy has proven effective elsewhere. Rents dropped more than 20% in real terms in the five years after planning reform sparked an apartment boom in Auckland; they increased by nearly 50% in Brisbane during same period.
Scanlon believes in a less cardependent city: “We want to see more medium density in particular,” she says, pointing to the environmental benefits and lower cost to the taxpayer and citizen.
But could a planned shift from the sprawl of Brisbane’s past set up a fight with the country’s largest local government during an election?
Housing for Queenslanders
In a unanimous 2020 vote, Brisbane city council banned townhouses from 63% of the city’s residential land. It also increased mandatory car parking requirements.
The state government’s “Homes for Queenslanders” plan calls for explicitly the opposite approach, calling for “minimum net densities and maximum carparking rates”.
Queensland has historically done little to force councils to change. But just like Victoria, which has set a time limit on council approvals, and NSW, which has proposed forcing councils to permit apartments up to six storeys near railway stations, there are increasing signs the state is looking to force change.
Under its new “mandatory housing target”, Brisbane must approve 210,800 new homes within the next 15 years. The state is also demanding the council write a new planning scheme within months, rather than years.
But how mandatory is mandatory? “I think we want to see how they respond to our request around those diversity targets,” Scanlon says.
“We’ll give them that opportunity to present to us how their planning scheme amendments align with the targets. And if we don’t get what we need, well, then we’ll have another conversation around how the state will intervene.”
Building up, not out
Scanlon argues that her own appointment is a form of reform.
“I think sometimes people underestimate the value of having everyone under one roof. I’ve already seen some of the improvements in the way that we’re operating just because you’ve got planners talking to the sort of social housing team,” she says.
The state government will allow homebuilders willing to set aside up to 20% of the dwellings in a development to be rented below market rate to ignore some planning rules like parking minimums to pay for them. This will be launched as a trial at about six sites.
It will also fund up to 100% of a developer’s “infrastructure charge” – the tax councils use to fund works like new water and sewage lines, roads, parks and more.
Scanlon says the state will be picky about when to pick up the bill – only doing so where the developments are in the “state interest” like smaller, more affordable, well located homes, and only where the project would otherwise be “unviable”.
“We heard from industry that that was an impediment. But we also heard from councils that they need the money.”
It might not be how many taxpayers would imagine their money being spent, but Scanlon is adamant that the biggest priority remains to boost supply.
“People are moving to Queensland, they’re flocking here from interstate and internationally, and we need more homes for them,” she says.
“And we can either go out, which I don’t think is necessarily the answer … or we could go up in a thoughtful way.
“And I think we have a job to do to convince people on that.”
• This story was amended on 26 February 2024 to remove a reference to Meaghan Scanlon as the minister for state development and infrastructure.
Grace Grace holds those portfolios.