Wayne Sedawie Says Australia’s Housing Approval System Is Broken

Australian entrepreneur Wayne Sedawie says home approvals and compliance rules are stretching build times and adding costs to housing in Australia. He argues the system needs standardization and faster approvals or affordability will keep worsening.

Why it matters: - Wayne Sedawie says Australia’s housing affordability problem is driven as much by delay as by land, labour and materials. - Longer approval and construction timelines push up financing, rent, insurance, rates and temporary accommodation costs. - Sedawie argues the current system is making homes slower and more expensive without delivering a proportional safety gain.

What happened: - Sedawie, an Australian entrepreneur and long-term property investor, criticized Australia’s housing approval system in a statement dated August 31, 2026. - Sedawie said he built his first three-bedroom home in 1975 in about 5.5 months. - Sedawie said a comparable three-bedroom home now takes 18 to 24 months from planning and approval through completion. - Sedawie said the shift shows a housing process that has become far slower over more than five decades.

The details: - Sedawie said modern residential builds now require engineering documentation, energy-efficiency assessments, bushfire and flood reports, detailed planning schemes, private certification, National Construction Code compliance, environmental and stormwater approvals, accessibility requirements and other specialist reports. - Sedawie said each requirement may appear reasonable on its own, but the combined burden drives up cost. - Sedawie said replacing a 26-year-old hot-water system triggered about $1,000 in extra compliance costs for meter-box and plumbing work unrelated to the appliance. - Sedawie said older building materials were often stronger than some of the softer materials used today. - Sedawie said his first home used heavy hardwood timber, while some modern materials are weaker. - Sedawie said housing policy should move toward standardised, factory-driven production rather than case-by-case bespoke approvals. - Sedawie said once a design is properly approved, repeated builds should not require the process to be reinvented each time. - Sedawie said the housing sector should borrow from manufacturing, where a solved production problem stays solved.

Between the lines: - Sedawie is not arguing against safety rules, but against what he sees as an unchecked accumulation of requirements. - Sedawie’s criticism points to a broader complaint that regulation has grown faster than its practical benefit. - Sedawie said one of his companies that imports electrical leads could not find an Australian certification body able to complete new mandatory testing. - Sedawie said the business had to secure certification through providers in Germany and China. - That example suggests compliance bottlenecks can affect industries beyond housing and can push work offshore when domestic systems cannot keep up. - Sedawie said housing policy is being shaped by people who have not run businesses or delivered projects on time and on budget. - Sedawie described the policymaking approach as too academic and too dependent on consultation and committee review. - Sedawie said bureaucracy tends to add layers rather than remove them, which he believes will keep pushing buyer costs higher after 2027.

What’s next: - Sedawie is urging policymakers to cut approval time, simplify compliance and standardize construction components. - Sedawie wants housing to shift toward factory manufacturing and faster approvals without lowering standards. - Sedawie is warning buyers that policy-driven costs may rise again from 2027. - Sedawie said Australians who want to buy a home should act sooner rather than later. - Sedawie said younger Australians will need every major cost driver — planning, compliance, construction and finance — addressed if home ownership is to become more attainable.

The bottom line: - Sedawie’s message is simple: Australia does not just have a housing supply problem; it has a process problem that makes homes slower to build and more expensive to buy.