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After hitting the North American construction industry, the timber shortage crisis is shifting to Australia and threatening the prosperity of the construction industry.

The Australian Association of Architects and the Australian Forest Products Association stated in a report that if there is no effort to plant more trees, Australia may face a gap of 250,000 wooden house frames in the next 15 years.

The two organizations stated in the report that the shortage could push up costs, slow down Australia's 212 billion Australian dollars (154 billion U.S. dollars) construction industry projects, and hinder the country's process of expanding housing supply. As other countries are also struggling to deal with similar shortages, increasing imports may be difficult. Imported timber usually accounts for about a quarter of Australia's demand for construction timber.

In a statement accompanying the report, Denita Wawn, chief executive of the Australian Association of Architects, said that this "sounds the alarm for decision makers. Act now to avoid a crisis in the construction industry in the next ten years." Relying on imports to fill the gap as activity increases-we need to act now."

Australia urgently needs to expand plantations. Pine trees usually take about 30 years to harvest, but as the Australian government tries to stimulate economic growth through measures to stimulate the real estate market, the demand for new houses is soaring.

Plantations have also shrunk in size over the past decade, and many forests in New South Wales and South Australia were razed to the ground by wildfires in 2019 and 2020.

The situation in Australia is similar to that in North America earlier this year.