By AIDAN KNIGHT
REGIONAL Australia will need 480,000 new homes by 2041 to keep pace with population shifts, and Gippsland is at the centre of the challenge. That was the stark message at Federation University on August 22, when the Regional Australia Institute’s Regions Rising conference returned to Victoria.
The RAI’s Regions Rising series has been a national event running since 2019. In which the organisation presents to a crowd of local thought leaders, policymakers, and community voices, to whom it presents its research on regional issues.
This year’s report was on ‘Answering the Call for Regional Housing’, and sets out a stark figure: regional Australia will need 480,000 new homes by 2041, representing around 40 per cent of the national housing target.
MC’ed by Kellie O’Callaghan, former Latrobe City mayor and now chairperson of Regional Development Australia (RDV), the forum brought together government, research, and community voices to address the mounting pressures on housing supply, affordability, and infrastructure.
The first keynote speaker, state Member for Eastern Victoria and Housing Minister Harriet Shing, was introduced by RDV chief executive Xavier Csar as “really the minister for Gippsland”. Ms Shing brushed off the joke with a smile, pleading with the crowd, “Don’t tell Darren Chester”, but turned quickly to the challenge at hand.
The minister described Latrobe as “an area of priority that is also a lightning rod of opportunity”, something that could be highlighted by her continued advocacy in the region for the now-defunct Latrobe Health Assembly.
Ms Shing said she saw Gippsland as an opportunity for the state to grow, in its current state of energy and industry transitions, while Victoria as a whole continues to see a rising population, and two in every five metro residents say they’re considering moving to the regions.
“But we need to grow well,” she emphasised the quality of the infrastructure being built to combat current statistics.
“If we don’t have adequate housing, we don’t have opportunity.”
The energy transition, in particular, she described as an opportunity of ‘once in a lifetime’ proportions, in terms of how much new employment, industry training, and supporting infrastructure it would open up.
“So preparing for these opportunities and ensuring we can create housing that is fit for purpose with long-term benefits for the regions, is vital,” Ms Shing said.
Gippsland alone is projected to have 50,000 new jobs in the next nine years, and with societal migration of capital city residents to regional areas continuing to trend, the math is there – but only if there are places for people to move into.
The state budget delivered a $61 million extension to the off-the-plan stamp duty concession, widely available to all buyers through October 2026, reducing upfront costs by up to $28,000 on a $620,000 apartment. Federally, the 2025-26 budget delivered a $33 billion housing package: expanding the Help to Buy scheme to assist up to 40,000 buyers, banning foreign purchases of existing homes for two years, investing $54 million in modular housing, and allocating $10 billion through the Housing Australia Future Fund for 30,000 social homes.
While meaningful, even combined, these measures fall short of the regional construction scale required to support forecast migration and job growth.
But critics argue the scale still falls short.
“When governments talk about housing, they aren’t talking about houses they are going to build,” Australian Housing and Research Institute managing director Dr Michael Fotheringham told the forum.
“That leaves the regions competing in the same strained private market as everyone else,” he said.
The numbers underline the gap. Net internal migration has surged to its highest level in 20 years, excluding the pandemic, with thousands leaving the cities. Without a pipeline of regional housing, the report warns, jobs and services risk outpacing the very communities they are meant to support.
Net internal migration in the past two years has been at its largest for the past two decades, even excluding the pandemic. Currently, two in every five metro dwellers equate to a bit over seven million new residents in the regions. This is a great figure for job openings and the corresponding skills shortage across the state, much of which is contained within the building sector itself, but it is a figure that, without new housing supply, risks overwhelming regional markets already under strain.
Part of the tackling of this problem will be done by the short stay levy, introduced through the Short Stay Levy Bill 2024 in late August 2024. The levy imposes a 7.5 per cent tax on short-term stays under 28 days, via platforms like Airbnb and Stayz , effective from January 1 this year.
Expected to raise around $60 million annually, the levy funnels all revenue to Homes Victoria, with 25 per cent dedicated to regional Victorian housing projects. The package also gives owners corporations the power to prohibit short-term rentals in their buildings (with 75 per cent approval), and grants local councils the authority to regulate or ban such accommodations.
Based on the discussion at the forum, several key support mechanisms emerged:
Dedicated regional housing funding tranches, with the RAI recommending 40 per cent of the National Housing Accord’s 1.2 million homes be allocated to regional areas;
Infrastructure funding for enabling infrastructure like roads, water, and power in new developments;
Establish a national regional housing commissioner;
Ensure at least 30 per cent regional representation on the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council;
Fund training for locally-based tradies and planners to address skill shortages, and;
And support modern methods of construction and prefabricated housing to speed up delivery.
Minister Shing emphasised local government was “essential” and “the driver” of housing outcomes, noting that councils are the interface between residents and large-scale policy decisions. The key is ensuring councils have the capability, capacity, and workforce development support needed while maintaining their role in community planning and social license management.
The message was clear: this requires all three levels of government working together, with regional-specific solutions rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.
