WA Labor’s Broken Housing Legacy

6 January 2025

In their recent mid-year budget review, the WA Government announced a new infrastructure scheme that, perhaps unintentionally, encapsulates the housing legacy of WA Labor’s second term – a legacy of enabling unsustainable housing sprawl

The housing legacy of WA Labor’s first term in government was failing to build enough homes. In 2021, after four years in government, there were 1100 fewer public houses than when they came to power. WA Labor’s second term legacy will be building the wrong kind of housing in the wrong locations.

Over the last few years, around 70% of Perth’s new housing has been built on Perth’s urban fringe – making one of the longest cities in the world even longer.

The WA Government seems to have given up on its own infill targets as it throws more money and infrastructure to enable sprawl

The new Housing Enabling Infrastructure Fund is to fast-track water pipes and power lines for new housing on Perth’s urban fringes including in Alkimos, Ellenbrook, Byford, and Mundijong. It is a $400 million fund that dwarfs the finds available for similar infrastructure to apartments and for infill.

This follows Metronet which also morphed into being a multi-billion-dollar sprawl enabler as inner-metro public transport projects were scrapped and Metronet largely became about outer metro train line extensions.

It should be no surprise then that next year while over 15,000 sprawl houses will be built, only 600 apartments will be completed for all metropolitan Perth. The projected apartment completions for 2026 are no better.

As a result, most of Perth’s infill won’t be apartments and townhouses near existing urban centres or close to train stations and other services as it should be. Instead, Perth’s infill will, once again, largely consist of bulldozing established homes in the suburbs. These old homes and the mature trees that sit alongside them will typically be replaced with triplex villas, each with a long treeless driveway and a tiny backyard.

This is why Perth has the lowest tree canopy cover of any Australian city and why it continues to decline.

To make matters worse, most of the housing that we are building is not sustainable and future-ready. At the end of 2024, WA is the only state to have not implemented either 7-star energy efficiency or liveable housing standards. WA will not be able to reach net zero without drastic energy efficiency improvements to its housing.

While the WA government’s first-term legacy of failing to deliver sufficient housing was troubling, it is its second-term legacy of energy-inefficient houses in largely unsustainable treeless sprawl estates that will impact Perth for decades.

As we approach an almost inevitable third term for WA Labor, it is time to push them to change course on housing. We need the WA Government to get serious about slowing sprawl while delivering well-planned, transit-orientated density, as well as new housing that is energy-efficient and ready for a zero-emissions future.

This impact of housing on West Australians now and into the future is too big an issue for us to let Labor stuff it up three terms in a row.