Land Release
State and territory governments oversee the release into the market of non-residential land for development through land-use rezoning and development consent which can influence the type and location of new housing supply.

Local government is responsible for the administration of state/territory planning laws and, in some jurisdictions, can set additional requirements. These laws may determine building sizes, heights and qualities (including building materials). Planning overlays may also restrict what types and sizes of developments are possible in specified streetscapes and historical precincts.

Safe and affordable housing is central to the security and dignity of all Australians. However, Australia is experiencing significant housing challenges.
The government is taking a national leadership role by implementing a range of measures to address Australia’s housing challenges, with a focus on helping those most in need.
The government is also partnering with all tiers of government, the private sector and the not for profit sector to increase the supply of safe, secure and affordable housing.
The Treasury supports the government’s housing agenda by providing advice and analysis across a range of housing related issues, including housing supply and affordability.

The Australian Government has agreed to a National Housing Accord (Accord) with states and territories, local government, institutional investors and the construction sector.

The Social Housing Accelerator payment was delivered to the states and territories in June 2023 so they could start investing in building new homes straight away.
This investment will:
• create around 4,000 homes for Australians on social housing waiting lists
• permanently increase the stock of social housing.

In Australia, you are not required to work with a professional when designing most residential structures. Here, the main consideration is whether the proposed structure complies with local planning requirements. If it does, it does not matter who was responsible for developing the design.

You can choose between engaging an architect, working with a building designer, or choosing a design and build builder. Each of these options has its benefits and can deliver a high-quality, bespoke home.

Transitional housing is an important form of housing assistance within Australia’s housing system. Transitional housing is for people with an urgent need for housing, typically people who are experiencing homelessness or have a very high risk of homelessness.

Appropriate short to medium term housing, along with tailored support services, helps people to stabilise their lives before moving into longer term housing.

As part of a transitional housing tenancy agreement, tenants are engaged with specialist homelessness services or support providers who will help develop a case plan to assist them to move forward and access suitable long-term secure and affordable housing. That may include connecting tenants to other services to help them get back on their feet and into training or employment.

Homelessness is a growing issue in Australia. If you don’t have access to conventional shelter, especially at night, or are couch surfing with friends, or living with violence in your home and needing to leave, you may be considered to be homeless.
There are many causes of homelessness. It can be anything from escaping from a troubled relationship or a situation that is violent to unemployment, to relationship breakdown.
There are many programs in Australia that aim to relieve homelessness. The services include advice, financial support and temporary accommodation.

Social housing is government subsidised short and long-term rental housing. In Australia in recent decades, it has mainly been available to people on very low incomes, and who often have experienced homelessness, family violence or have other complex needs.

Social housing is made up of two types of housing:
public housing, which is owned and managed by State and Territory Governments, and
community housing, which is managed (and often owned) by not-for-profit organisations.

Social housing differs from private rental in that housing is allocated according to need, rather than by households competing in a market, and from emergency accommodation in that it provides longer term and secure rental housing.

In 2005, a meeting of Australian Housing, Local Government and Planning Ministers had described affordable housing as ‘housing which is affordable for low and moderate income households across home ownership, private rental as well as public rental tenures … The benchmark for affordability is 25 to 30 per cent of the income of these target groups.’

The now discontinued National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) considered affordable housing as having rents lower than the prevailing local market rate, with the Scheme capping rents at 20 per cent below market rates to eligible tenants for a 10-year period.

While this was a welcome form of assistance, depending on location, the reduced rents were not always 'affordable' in absolute terms. In higher rent regions (such as capital cities and some regional coastal cities) low-income households receiving such assistance to make their housing ‘affordable’ could still be in housing affordability stress (i.e. paying more than 30% of income in housing costs). In other words, housing may be considered affordable when compared to the market rent, but it may not be affordable relative to the residents’ income.

In such areas affordable housing schemes may operate as a way to support rental housing for key workers (usually people working in lower paid, but key civic jobs such as police, health and education workers), rather than delivering housing that is affordable to very low and low-income households.

Residential aged care is for senior Australians who can no longer live in their own home. It includes accommodation and personal care 24 hours a day, as well as access to nursing and general health care services. We subsidise aged care homes to provide residential care to eligible people.

Retirement villages and residential aged care facilities are designed for people at different stages of life and with very different needs.

Retirement villages are made up of private homes and usually offer a range of shared facilities for recreation and relaxation, including pools, community centres, gymnasiums and sports facilities such as bowling greens or tennis courts. They often also have spaces for doctors, physiotherapists, hairdressers and other ‘come to you’ services.

Unlike retirement villages where you may or may not require additional care or support, residential aged care provides accommodation, health care and support services to seniors requiring round-the-clock supervision and assistance.

Although the housing situation of First Nations people has improved – for example with rises in home ownership and falling levels of homelessness – it has been recognised that First Nations people have significantly less access to affordable, secure and quality housing (AIHW 2019a; AIHW and NIAA 2020). As such, governments are increasingly targeting housing as an essential policy area for improving the health and wellbeing of First Nations people.
This page focuses on housing tenure (including ownership, rental, and social housing), housing affordability, housing assistance, housing quality (including facilities and structural soundness) and overcrowding. It also looks at homelessness and the use of relevant services by First Nations people.

With around 60 per cent of Indigenous Australians living in rental accommodation (compared to around 30 per cent of non-Indigenous Australians who rent) understanding what makes Indigenous tenancies work successfully is vital, new AHURI research has confirmed.

We identified that cultural differences between the way Indigenous and Western families use housing were not adequately accounted for in rental housing service provision and tenancy agreements,’ says Dr Moskos. ‘For example, the traditional responsibilities of Indigenous tenants to house extended family members when needed can conflict with the expectations of landlords around visitors and overcrowding, and thus threaten tenancy arrangements.’
Issues around communication and the ability of tenants to understand the implications of their tenancy agreements were also highlighted.
To find ‘what worked’, the research looked closely at three case studies in different regions of Australia and identified some common factors in successful tenancies:
• the way that services were delivered; central to this was the importance of having the correct policy settings that supported the programs in prioritising and responding to the circumstances of individual tenants was highlighted
• the staffing of the programs; having the right staff was a vital component of the success of the case-study programs. Staff with previous experience in community housing were considered to be valuable, as well as those who were willing to spend time with tenants and be flexible in the delivery of services to deliver positive housing and non-housing outcomes.
• linkages with other service providers (e.g. broader health and community services) enabled a joined-up approach to service delivery.

CORE works with members and stakeholders on innovative solutions to challenging soil related issues. From enhancing agricultural soils to treating complex soil contamination issues, CORE develops solutions using methods and technologies involving bio-products tailor-made for the situation.

Our Circular Economy goals are to help with decontaminating waste through Case Studies from our Pilots to prove systems and innovations that help change habits in the workplace which will then ripple out to the home, while creating new industries, jobs and entrepreneurship in our region.

Reef Catchments is the Natural Resource Management (NRM) organisation for the Mackay Whitsunday Isaac region. We facilitate change and work for long-term solutions to sustain, protect, and improve our region’s natural resources and environment, both now and into the future.

What is Circular Economy?
We think it’s important to recognise that circular economy initiatives fall under the ‘sustainability’ umbrella, but not all sustainability initiatives are circular.

For the purpose of the Queensland Circular Economy (Industry-Research) program, initiatives supported should fit within the Queensland Waste Management and Resource Recovery Strategy’s definition of the circular economy where: products and materials keep circulating within the economy at their highest value for as long as possible, through reuse, recycling, remanufacturing, delivering products as services, and sharing. Also for inclusion are initiatives which address avoiding the waste of products and materials.

In a practical sense that means the principal aim of initiatives or proposals will be around addressing waste and retaining value of materials and products; and any water and energy efficiency benefits will be seen as a bonus.

We are looking for those initiatives that will contribute to Queensland being a zero-waste society by reducing material and products going to landfill.

Gulf Savannah NRM is a natural resource management organisation delivering projects in Queensland's Northern Gulf region to support sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, and healthy landscapes and waterways.

Climate-KIC Australia orchestrates collaborative efforts to deliver connected and coordinated climate action. We work across multiple levers of change, including technology, business models, markets, finance and investment, policy and regulation, knowledge and skills, organisational culture and ways of working.

Organic waste makes up around half of what Queenslanders throw away each week in their kerbside waste (red lid) bin. Diverting organic material from landfill presents numerous environmental and economic benefits, ranging from significant landfill methane emissions reduction to the generation of a value-added product.

The Queensland Government supported Townsville City, Rockhampton Regional and Lockyer Valley Regional Councils to undertake the trials.

As part of the trial, each council provided an additional bin to a sample of households to test collection frequencies, equipment types and community engagement methods.

The trials successfully diverted hundreds of tonnes of organic waste from landfill. The information gathered from the trials is being used by the Queensland Government and councils to assess the suitably of ongoing FOGO collections in Queensland.

The trials were made possible due to the dedicated waste management teams in the local governments who have been on the ground every day ensuring that their communities embrace new ways of managing their waste.

Developing a Business Case Method
Dr Ian Dover is at the helm of this project, which begins with a comprehensive board-style workshop on October 23rd in Brisbane CBD. The workshop will review existing economic, social, environmental, and governance models for post-mining land-use options, incorporating fresh insights from expert stakeholders to craft a draft business case methodology for application across Queensland regional sites.

The initial workshop phase has secured funding from enviroMETS, and we are actively seeking full funding from other stakeholders. This phase will:
• Distil viable options from site and regional characterization.
• Identify the net value uplift (in dollars) of mineral resources, new commercial opportunities, social benefits, environmental advantages, and cultural enrichment options.
• Standardize a format to make the 'authorization process' comparable and efficient.
• Test a 'practitioner toolkit' with five pre-feasibility regional pilot site business cases.

This project will take the insights gained from LHP1 and LHP2 and develop them into investible business cases for new PMLU solutions. These solutions will support improved environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes for specific sites across Queensland, making it our third Lighthouse Project.

We are heartened by the overwhelming support from the community for our structured approach to establish several pilot/test site facilities in Queensland. These sites will allow stakeholders to discover and validate innovative new economic purposes.

Progress so far? Thanks to the enthusiastic participation of LHP1 and LHP2 attendees, we are gaining interest from government bodies, communities, mining companies, METS suppliers, and other industry sectors. Initiatives for scoping and funding have already begun.

Mapping the Regulatory Environment
Led by Prof Brett Heyward, this project is on a mission to gain a practical understanding of Queensland's regulatory framework and industry practices, and how they impact the economic transformation of mining-affected land and communities. This fully funded initiative will:
• Identify and map regulatory pathways and industry practices posing challenges to repurposing scenarios.
• Uncover opportunities for establishing pilot/trial sites.
• Gather insights from international experiences with innovative post-mining land use.
• Provide recommendations for solutions to address these challenges.
• Extend industry and regulator support to establish an enabling environment for innovative post-mining land use.
Where are we now? We've completed numerous stakeholder meetings, including a workshop with industry and regulatory participants that revealed a multitude of factors influencing the feasibility of post-mining land use opportunities. Our research team has also kicked off several case studies covering various mining types and PMLU options, all aimed at further enriching our project findings.

Solutions that enable the cost-effective recovery of secondary minerals from mining waste can unlock valuable critical and strategic mineral resources and may offset the costs of mine rehabilitation activities.

Recognising the potential value of these assets, Geoscience Australia recently launched an online Atlas of Mine Waste to provide information about mine tailings, waste rock, and other mining waste stockpiles in Australia.56

Cost-effective solutions that support secondary mineral extraction from waste streams such as tailings, wastewater, and waste rock stockpiles present an opportunity to improve closure outcomes. Consultations have noted that economic recovery opportunities are present in legacy sites where less efficient extractive processes have left high concentrations of target minerals in waste.