Housing approvals - based on FOI document No. 82498

Question

1. Do you think the quality of your data systems that track approvals are up to scratch? a. Is that why more funding was allocated to this area in the 2026-27 Budget? 2. How many projects and related houses are locked up in EPBC approval? 3. How many projects and related houses have been approved between August 2025 and today? How many projects have been added since August 2025? 4. How many houses are caught up in the department's approval net, versus how many are with the developer? 5. Do you calculate the time length it takes for the developer to complete all the requirements for approval, should that be a consideration in how the Act works and the recent changes? 6. The Department noted when calculating the number of homes in each project ''Where a dwelling estimate was not included in an application or readily identified through an online search..'' Is it concerning that the Federal Department appears to rely on online searches to determine the number of dwellings for projects? 7. How accurate are the dwelling numbers given the document released by your own department questions the methodology saying ''common pitfall is assuming that 100% of the site is available for housing construction...taking a simple X hectares multiplied by Y housing density will always result in an overestimate of housing yield.''? 8. According to the FOI document when generating the 95,000 dwelling figures you only have data for 60% of that figure, the rest is a guess? What projects are under consideration? 9. Why is there such a large backlog of housing from 2015-2019? And why have a large number of these been rejected?

Answer

Please see the attached answer.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• SQ26-000640.pdf (opens in a new tab)