The 1.2 million homes target just slipped to 2030, and a Senate committee reports on who that leaves behind

The federal government's own housing advisers put out a quarterly report on 21 August. It says building approvals are up 26 per cent since the National Housing Accord began, that 244,000 dwellings were under construction in the March quarter, the most since records started in 1984, and that the 1.2 million homes target will now be reached in the December quarter of 2030, one quarter later than the same body estimated in its April 2026 report. On 30 September a Senate committee reports on who gets locked out while that plays out, and its terms of reference name geographical location as one of the things that decides it.

31 August 2026 · the quarterly report, the submission and the committee's terms of reference, read at source

What the numbers say, and the one that is going backwards

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council is the independent body that advises the federal government on housing supply. Its August 2026 Quarterly Report tracks progress against the National Housing Accord's target of 1.2 million new homes, and the headline figures are genuinely better than the mood suggests: approvals up 26 per cent on the quarter before the Accord began, commencements up 15 per cent, 308,000 homes completed since it started, about a quarter of the target, and houses taking 10 per cent less time to build.

Read the footnotes and one of those is moving the wrong way. The Council's own March 2026 quarterly report put both approvals and commencements at 17 per cent above the pre-Accord quarter. Approvals have since gone from 17 to 26. Commencements have gone from 17 to 15. Permission to build is accelerating and actually starting is not, which is the gap that decides whether an approval ever becomes a home.

National Housing Accord progress, as reported by the Council
Measure	March 2026 report	August 2026 report
Quarterly building approvals, change since the Accord started	+17%	+26%
Quarterly commencements, change since the Accord started	+17%	+15%
When 1.2 million is reached	not stated here	December quarter 2030

The Council's comparisons are seasonally adjusted and use different base quarters for each measure: approvals compare June quarter 2026 with June quarter 2024, and commencements compare March quarter 2026 with June quarter 2024. The national highlights use data as at 6 August 2026.

What is pushing the date out

The Council is direct about costs. House construction costs rose 2 per cent in the June quarter of 2026 and are now 51 per cent higher than before the pandemic and its supply chain disruptions, with higher fuel and petrochemical prices from the conflict in the Middle East feeding through. It warns that rising costs may reduce the financial feasibility of some projects, and that softer sentiment and recent interest rate increases are likely to see some construction deferred.

Against that, the volume of work in the ground is at a record. There were 244,000 dwellings under construction in the March quarter of 2026, and of that the report says: This was the highest result since records began in 1984. A record pipeline and a target that moves further away are not a contradiction. They are what it looks like when the work under way is large and the rate of new starts is not keeping pace with what the target needs.

The inquiry that reports on 30 September

The Senate resolved on 4 November 2025 to establish a Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity, which came into being on 17 March 2026. Submissions closed on 1 May and were extended to 15 May. Its final report is due by 30 September 2026.

Its terms of reference are broader than the usual supply argument. Alongside tax settings, lending rules and public housing investment, the committee was asked to report on the experience of intergenerational housing inequity on different population cohorts, including but not limited to socio-economic, gender, geographical location, disability, ethnicity and racial status. Geographical location is in that list, which is what makes a national inquiry a local one.

The Council made a submission of its own, number 7 of the 20 published, signed by its chair Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz. It is short and it points the committee at the Council's April report, with a summary worth reading twice: in 2025, the pace of homebuilding picked up and completion times improved, but rental affordability and purchase affordability deteriorated further in 2025, adding to growing concerns about intergenerational housing inequality. Building faster has not yet made buying or renting easier.

Why this lands here

The Coast is the New South Wales council with more residents aged 65 and over than any other, 81,492 of them, as we reported on 30 August from the Bureau of Statistics' own data cube. Intergenerational housing inequity is, in the committee's framing, about what happens as housing wealth passes from one generation to the next, and about who is left holding rent instead. A local government area with the state's largest older population and a long commuter belt is, on the committee's own list of cohorts, exactly the kind of place the answer differs in.

What the report will actually say is unknown, and we are not going to guess it. What is knowable today is the date, 30 September, and the questions it was handed. We will read it when it lands.

Sources

Quarterly Report, August 2026 National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, published 21 August 2026, read 31 August 2026. The 26 per cent and 15 per cent changes and their base quarters; the 308,000 completions and 10 per cent build-time figure; the 244,000 dwellings under construction and the quoted 1984 record; the 2 per cent quarterly and 51 per cent post-pandemic construction cost figures and the Middle East fuel and petrochemical link; the December quarter 2030 estimate and that it is one quarter later than the Council's own State of the Housing System 2026 report; and the footnote that the March 2026 Quarterly Report put both approvals and commencements at 17 per cent.
Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity Parliament of Australia, read 31 August 2026. The Senate resolution of 4 November 2025, establishment on 17 March 2026, the submission closing date of 1 May extended to 15 May 2026, the final reporting date of 30 September 2026, and the terms of reference quoted above.
Submission 7, National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (listed on the committee’s submissions page) PDF, downloaded and read 31 August 2026, signed by Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz AM as Chair: the two passages quoted, and the count of 20 submissions published on the committee's submissions page at the time of reading.
The Coast has more residents over 65 than any council in NSW The Coast Record, 30 August 2026: the 81,492 figure, calculated by us from the Australian Bureau of Statistics data cube cited in that story.

Methodology. The quarterly report page, the committee page and the Council's submission PDF were each read at source. The comparison between the March and August quarterly reports is drawn from the August report's own footnotes, which state what the earlier report said, so both numbers come from the same document. The observation that approvals accelerated while commencements slowed is ours, and the base quarters differ between the two measures, which is stated above rather than smoothed over. We have not read the March 2026 quarterly report or the State of the Housing System 2026 report directly, and say so rather than implying otherwise; both are named in the August report and are the obvious next reach. The count of 20 submissions is what the committee's page listed when we read it and will grow if more are published. Nothing here predicts the committee's findings.

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