Despite a chronic shortage of affordable housing supply, Australian governments have been slow to support affordable housing provision through the land use planning and development process. This stands in distinct contrast to other countries where the practice is more prevalent (Calavita and Mallach 2010; Gurran and Whitehead 2011). Australia’s first pilot inclusionary schemes emerged in the mid-1990s in the context of the Federal Government’s Building Better Cities program which funded a number of demonstration projects including urban renewal efforts in Sydney’s Pyrmont Ultimo and in East Perth. Both of these included requirements for . It resulted in an ongoing inclusionary zoning requirement which is embedded in the local planning instrument applying to Pyrmont Ultimo. The approach was subsequently extended to the major urban renewal precinct surrounding Green Square which lies between the Sydney CBD and the airport. Overall, however, the NSW Government has been reluctant to allow local authorities to impose mandatory requirements for affordable housing through the planning process (Williams 2015). Similarly, at the Federal level, the primary focus of efforts designed to address affordability through planning have been around measures to increase overall land and housing supply.

However, using the planning system to support affordable housing supply has been an important part of wider government housing strategies in Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory (Rowley, James et al. 2017), for instance, by enabling innovative subdivision and housing designs which translate to development cost savings able to be passed on to eligible home purchasers or affordable housing developers. Similarly, access to well-located land at a lower or nil cost represents a significant contribution towards the viability of affordable housing development (Randolph, Milligan et al. (2018), Supporting Research Project C). Inclusionary planning levers can help secure these opportunities as part of mixed tenure projects. An inclusionary planning model has formed part of housing policy in South Australia since 2005, and a series of reforms introduced in NSW in 2009 opened new opportunities to secure affordable housing through the planning process in that state (Davison, Gurran et al. 2012).