Government's leadership role for housing sector policy reform

For more than eight decades, there has been significant global and local monitoring of the performance of the construction industry, of which the housing sector is an integral element, through numerous government-led investigations. Construction industry investigations have a history (genealogy) and the more recent inquiries are only among the many in a long stream of inquiries. The rationale for an investigation is often related to a crisis, e.g. lack of supply, cost over runs, productivity, corruption, accidents, housing affordability, building disasters (collapse/fire etc.). ‘Calls to action’ are made through recommendations to both government regulators and industry professions for structural and behavioural changes. However, often only regulatory reform followed. Through analysis of U.K. and Australian government-led investigation case studies, we evidence that ‘problematising’ investigations as regulatory failure biases recommendations towards regulatory reform. The housing sector problems cannot be solved through the ‘rule of law’ only and require leadership from industry, public and private sector clients, government regulators, professional associations, and educational institutions to collaborate for change. As a result of our research, we identify drivers and enablers aimed specifically at private and public sector housing clients. More broadly, little attention has been paid to developing a coherent method of monitoring reform recommendations and this is an area worthy of attention for future research and policy implementation.