25 July

Imagine how expensive your car would be if car companies had to come to every home to build your vehicle from scratch, in your driveway. Cars are affordable because we don’t do that. We build them in factories, with vast economies of scale. We ‘industrialise’ car-making. Now contrast that with how we build houses. Nearly all built on-site. Building a house is now hugely expensive as a result. The John Curtin research group has put the thought-provoking proposal to the ALP’s National Conference that we re-industrialise housing. Shift to building homes in factories, before moving them to their location. Re-invigorating Australian industry and dramatically cutting costs and increasing quality of new homes. Industrial processes are independent of weather, incredibly precise and quality-controlled. This is quite common overseas. I’ll do a separate post about why it isn’t here. As a post-script here, ‘industrialised’ house-building is why I’m alive. My dad came to Australia as part of a massive housing push after the war, to build large numbers of affordable homes for Australians. He was part of that industrialised housing industry, pre-fabricated homes were shipped in from overseas and constructed on-site here in Australia.