120,000 homeless tonight. 8–12 million square metres of empty commercial space. The doom loop is structural. The SBC opens new options at continental scale: corridor towns at $150/wk, ghost home tax, commercial conversions, granny flats as-of-right, community farm trials. Every angle simultaneously.
High housing costs force long commutes, rental stress, mental health pressure, less savings, less business investment, lower tax revenue, more borrowing. The loop tightens. Every other social problem is downstream of the rent. The mental health crisis. The fertility decline. The retreat from regional Australia. The collapse of community participation. All are partially housed in the housing crisis.
Australia is not short of land. It is short of land with planning permission. Zoning restrictions, height limits, heritage overlays, and approval timelines that run to years have strangled supply. The structural answer is supply — and supply has been blocked at the planning layer for three decades.
Zoned, serviced land sits idle. Capital gains on undeveloped land are taxed at a discount to income, making land banking the rational strategy for investors. Land that could house families instead sits as a balance sheet item. The tax structure produces the outcome.
Negative gearing and discounted CGT give investors a structural advantage over first home buyers competing for the same properties. The subsidy is estimated at $30B+ per year. It flows to investors. First home buyers are bidding against a tax-subsidised competitor.
Australia's social housing stock as a percentage of total housing has declined for decades. The Commonwealth's exit from direct construction in the 1990s was never reversed. Waiting lists run to years. The system that catches people when private rent fails has been shrinking faster than the population it serves grows.
Office vacancy in major CBDs: 15–25%. Retail strips have one business for every three that closed. An estimated 8–12 million square metres of empty commercial floor space exists right now. The buildings exist. The locations exist. The infrastructure exists. The use case has shifted post-COVID — and the planning system has not caught up.
The most effective housing solution — the granny flat — is obstructed by planning systems requiring council approval subject to discretion. Fees, delays, and refusal rates make it uneconomic. A solution that adds dwellings without changing the streetscape is blocked by the layer of government least equipped to make the call.
Australia has never conducted a comprehensive survey of foreign beneficial ownership of residential property. Nobody knows the full scale. Vacant foreign-held properties collect capital gains while Australian families cannot find a rental. The data does not exist because the system has chosen not to look.
40+ new towns with full infrastructure, sovereign energy, and maglev. Combined with all MMP policies, the SBC creates the conditions to end street homelessness — not as a guarantee, but as the logical consequence of building a country where shelter is plentiful and dignity is assumed. Rent $150/wk. Rent-to-buy pathway from day one.
Empty commercial space converted to community living. Office floors become apartments. Ground floor becomes shared space — kitchens, co-working, childcare, gardens. Fast-track approval in 60 days. 10% floor area as shared space. The 8–12 million m² of vacant commercial floor space becomes housing within a single parliamentary term.
Approved as-of-right on residential properties nationally. No council discretion to refuse. Complying development only. One federal standard overrides all councils. Unlocks tens of thousands of dwellings without changing the streetscape, without requiring greenfield development, without contested rezonings.
SBC corridor towns supply social housing at scale. The Commonwealth returns to direct construction — through the SBC and its industrial precincts. Houses built at SBC corridor prices: $150,000–$250,000 each, including land, on Crown land transferred to occupants on rent-to-buy terms. The waiting list approach ends.
Annual federal survey of foreign beneficial ownership of residential property — published. Vacancy tax on properties unoccupied for more than 6 months. Foreign-owned vacant property: punitive rate. Data + tax + transparency. The structural answer to the question Australia has refused to ask.
CGT lifted to 30% on residential property speculation. 25% on productive business investment and shares. Negative gearing phased out over 5 years for new investors. The tax structure stops subsidising the bidding war that prices Australian families out of Australian homes.