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Staff Reporter
The Housing Industry Association is urging the federal government to inject more funds into housing construction.
While the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that building activity actually rose slightly in the first quarter of 2011, the HIA believes more needs to be done in order to help this trend continue.
HIA chief economist Harley Dale said that seasonally adjusted residential building work done increased by 1.9 per cent to an annual level of $47.6 billion in the March 2011 quarter.
“It is good to see a modest rise in residential building activity in early 2011, a result driven primarily by a 5.6 per cent increase in new construction of other dwellings,” he said.
“Unfortunately work done on detached houses was flat over the quarter rather than also posting a rise. The trend in new home building activity nevertheless turned down from late 2010. Leading indicators of new housing activity point to an acceleration of this downward trend in 2011/12 at a time when we clearly need the opposite to be occurring.”
In the March 2011 quarter, seasonally adjusted new residential building work done increased by 7.3 per cent in New South Wales and was up by 1.7 per cent in Victoria, 2 per cent in Tasmania, and 27.4 per cent in the Australian Capital Territory.
Work done was flat in Western Australia and fell by 5.2 per cent in Queensland and 0.7 per cent in South Australia.
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