Nationalise Minerals, Fix Housing

Australia's mineral wealth is immense, yet most of it ends up in shareholders' pockets, many of them overseas, rather than funding homes for Australian families. Meanwhile, more than a million low-income households are in housing stress.

So here's my question as a builder who watches families get priced out every year:

What if our minerals paid for the homes we desperately need?

This is an opinion piece, and a big idea. I'll lay out the size of the shortfall, what Norway did with its oil, the legal path that already exists in Australian law, one costed funding scenario, and the objections you'll hear.

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Over half of low‑income Australians live in persistent housing stress—and with projections showing we’ll miss our housing target by nearly 400,000 dwellings by 2029, the status quo is failing us

The housing shortfall in numbers

Under the National Housing Accord, governments have committed to 1.2 million new homes between July 2024 and June 2029. Industry forecasts, including the Urban Development Institute of Australia's 2025 State of the Land report, put us around 400,000 homes short of that target.

On top of that, Everybody's Home estimates a separate gap of about 640,000 social and affordable homes. That's not part of the 400,000. It's the households who need genuinely affordable or social housing now.

Who's carrying the weight:

Low-income households: over a million spend more than 30% of their income on rent or mortgage.
Renters: they're squeezed hardest, and the stress shows up in mental health surveys year after year.
People at risk of homelessness: couch surfers, people in insecure rentals and those on public housing waitlists.

Why it keeps getting worse

Supply lags demand. Capital cities completed roughly 135,000 homes in 2024, well short of what's needed each year to keep pace.
Population growth. Net migration of over a million people between 2023 and 2028 adds to demand every year.
Housing as a wealth store. When governments run deficits and tax settings favour property, money that could build homes gets parked in existing houses for capital gains. Homes become financial assets first and places to live second.

The cost of closing the gap

Let's keep the maths simple and use one scenario throughout.

Average house and land package: $700,000
Shortfall: about 400,000 homes
Total cost to close the gap: $280 billion

To close that in ten years we need about $28 billion a year, which builds 40,000 extra homes a year.

Is $700,000 too high? It's roughly the current greenfield turnkey price. Building at scale through a public program should bring unit costs down, so this is a conservative figure.

Where the money could come from

Mining is not small change.

Western Australia collected $11.2 billion in mining royalties in 2023 to 24, with iron ore alone bringing in about $9.85 billion. That helped deliver a $3.2 billion state surplus.
Australia's resources and energy exports are worth over $400 billion a year.
Industry figures put total company tax and royalties from the sector at around $64 billion a year.

The sector is heavily foreign-owned, so a large share of the profit leaves the country as dividends.

Prosper Australia estimates that if our royalty and resource rent regime captured as much as Norway's does, governments could collect up to $66 billion more each year. Directing about 40% of that extra take, $28 billion a year, into a ring-fenced housing fund delivers the 40,000 extra homes a year and closes the 400,000-home gap in about ten years.

What Norway did with its oil

Australia has long admired Norway, and for good reason. It's not what you have, it's how you use it.

High resource tax. Oil and gas profits face a combined marginal rate of about 78%: the standard 22% company tax plus a special petroleum tax.
A sovereign wealth fund. The Government Pension Fund Global was set up in the 1990s and held around US$1.7 trillion in early 2025, the largest in the world.
Fiscal discipline. Governments spend only the fund's expected real return, about 3% a year, never the principal.
Transparency. The fund publishes every holding and every vote it casts, and it excludes investments on ethical grounds.

The oil companies didn't leave. BP and others still operate in the North Sea. Profits are smaller, but returns are still healthy, and Norwegians own a direct stake in their natural wealth.

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Norway’s oil fund, worth roughly US $1.7 trillion (~AUD $2.5 trillion, ~$340,000 per person) and formed via a 78% resource rent tax, shows what is possible when a nation truly harnesses its resources for public long-term benefit .

Nationalisation is already built into our law

Nationalisation sounds radical. In Australia, the legal groundwork is already there.

Minerals belong to the Crown. In Western Australia, the Mining Act 1978 vests minerals in the Crown, even where the surface land is privately owned. Other states are similar.
Mining tenure is leased, not owned. Companies operate under time-limited leases with conditions set by the state. At renewal, the Crown can change the terms.
Resumption with compensation exists. Governments already resume land for public purposes and pay fair compensation. It's the same principle used when a home is acquired for a highway upgrade.

So the pathway is either renegotiating at lease expiry or resuming with compensation. Both mechanisms already exist.

We already run big public enterprises

Australia has plenty of state-owned, commercially run businesses.

Energex is part of Energy Queensland, owned by the Queensland Government. It runs the electricity network for about 1.5 million customers in South East Queensland, pays dividends to the state, and still works with private contractors and lenders every day.
SEC Victoria was revived in 2023 as a state-owned energy company investing in renewables.

What privatisation actually cost us

Selling public assets gave governments a one-off budget sugar hit. Households got decades of higher charges in return. I call it service decay: once a monopoly service is owned for shareholder return rather than public purpose, prices rise and service slips.

Airports. Sydney Airport was privatised in 2002. Aeronautical charges per passenger have since risen in real terms, and former ACCC chair Rod Sims has been a vocal critic of how airport privatisation was handled.
Toll roads. Contracts run for decades with price escalators that often outpace wages, and western Sydney commuters now spend a big slice of their pay just getting to work.
Commonwealth Bank. It was sold in the 1990s for roughly $8 billion in total. It now makes around $10 billion profit a year. Taxpayers swapped a permanent income stream for a one-off payment.

Pathways back exist: buy-backs funded by low-cost government bonds, refusing renewal or demanding equity when leases expire, and a public option that competes with private operators, as Victoria is doing with the SEC.

Building blocks we already have

We don't need to invent the plumbing.

Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF). Legislated in 2023 with a $10 billion fund, it targets 30,000 social and affordable homes in its first five years: 20,000 social and 10,000 affordable.
Housing Australia. The former NHFIC became Housing Australia on 1 October 2023 and manages HAFF and the Accord programs.
WA's Royalties for Regions. WA already sets aside part of its royalties for regional infrastructure, proving royalty money can be ring-fenced.
Keystart. WA's government-backed low-deposit lender has helped well over 100,000 West Australians buy a first home since 1989.

HAFF's 30,000 homes are welcome, but they're a small dent in a 400,000-home gap. Adding $28 billion a year changes the scale completely.

A roadmap

Legislate a Minerals and Housing Fund. A set share of state and Commonwealth resource rents flows into it each year.
Independent governance. A Future Fund-style board, independent audit and quarterly public reporting.
Long-term commitments to Housing Australia. Predictable, decade-long capital lets builders plan, train apprentices and gain economies of scale.
Report to Parliament every year on dwellings started, cost per home and regional spread, mirroring Norway's transparency.
Partnership, not confrontation. Mining companies can still bid for service contracts and joint ventures.

Put energy efficiency first

If we're spending public money on homes, they should be cheap to run.

The International Energy Agency calls energy efficiency the "first fuel", because a kilowatt-hour you never use is cheaper than any new supply. NCC 2022 lifted the minimum for most new homes to 7 NatHERS stars, phased in across the states from late 2023, with Queensland adopting it from May 2024.

For a low-income household, energy, transport and maintenance can bite harder than the mortgage. Building every new social and affordable home to 7 stars or better, funded by resource revenue, turns climate policy into cost-of-living policy.

It also makes more sense than chasing symbolic net-zero dates. Our domestic targets ignore the emissions from coal and gas we export, which are far larger than our own domestic footprint. Cutting household bills today with better homes is real progress you can measure.

The common objections

"It'll scare off investment"

Investors want access to world-class deposits. Chile's state-owned Codelco is one of the world's largest copper producers and still sells to buyers around the globe. Norway's 78% oil tax hasn't emptied the North Sea. Geology beats ownership.

"It's legally impossible"

Minerals already belong to the Crown, leases are time-limited, and resumption with compensation is a normal legal tool.

"Public enterprises are inefficient"

Energy Queensland pays regular dividends and works alongside private firms. Well-regulated, commercially structured public enterprises can and do work.

If a Norway-style regime could raise up to $66 billion a year more, and we're short $280 billion of homes, the current take isn't fair to the families waiting.

"It'll become a pork barrel"

That risk is real, so build in Norway's safeguards: publish everything, audit independently and cap the annual draw-down.

"What about mining jobs?"

Ownership changes who receives the dividends, not who works the mine. Operations continue.

"Doesn't planning reform matter more?"

Both matter. Approvals alone don't build homes without capital.

What it would mean for a Queensland family

If you're building in Queensland right now, this won't change your contract price next month. What a well-funded public building program would change is the market around you: more social and affordable homes taking pressure off rents, a steadier pipeline that keeps trades employed through the cycle, and less competition for land from people who have nowhere else to go.

A steady pipeline also helps quality. Builders who know work is coming can train apprentices and hold good crews together instead of chasing the next boom.

Reclaim, build, belong

Our minerals are a one-time gift. Housing is a permanent need. Capturing a fair share of resource rents, the way Norway did with oil, gives us a lawful path to close the $280 billion housing gap and turn export booms into homes.

Reclaim a fair share of mineral rents.
Reverse the privatisations that cost households most.
Reinvest in energy-efficient, affordable homes.

The governance plumbing is mostly in place. What's missing is political nerve, and that only arrives when voters demand it, loudly and with the facts.

Minerals for Homes: Why Australia Must Nationalise Its Resource