National plan to fast-track housing gets WA’s tick | Australian Markets

Western Australia will back the use of artificial intelligence to fast-track housing approvals, as all States proceed to fall short of national building targets.

The Albanese Government has additionally vowed to pause additional adjustments to the national construction code, after final week’s financial reform round-table in Canberra really useful “commonsense changes” to scale back the “regulatory burden” on builders.

WA’s Housing Minister and Commerce Minister each backed the concepts on Sunday, rejecting the suggestion it may scale back building requirements.

“No, I don’t have concerns in this respect, the construction code now is quite robust,” Commerce Minister Tony Buti informed reporters.

“There will still be the ability to bring in necessary safety requirements if need be, but the problem is that builders are constantly telling us that, with the code changing, it’s very expensive and makes it very uncertain for their industry.

“So there was talk about a freeze . . . I think it’s probably a sensible idea, but we need to work through the finer details.”

WA fell 4,000 houses short of the National Housing Accord’s 2024 annual goal of 24,000 new houses, however carried out higher than most different states.

Housing Minister John Carey mentioned slicing crimson tape is essential to “supercharge” housing development and backed plans to set up a strike pressure and use AI to speed up environmental assessments.

“That will be in the first instance for more of the basic stuff,” he mentioned.

“We have a process called ‘deemed to comply’, that is if you meet these certain boxes then you get approval. Even with AI, you are going to, at some stage, have some human approval to review it.

“It’s exciting to actually think that we could get AI integrated, for example, in the building permit level. Because the number of local residents that complain about the length of time for even the building permit stage, or even sometimes it’s just because someone’s lost documents, AI processes can assist with that.”