Australia is building a lot of new homes. But is the datacentre boom holding us back?

In the past year, spending on datacentre construction was 17 times higher than spending on factory construction in Australia, writes Greg Jericho Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The latest series of data on housing and building activity has been released, showing residential building is growing strongly but also that the datacentre boom is massive and ongoing.

As political parties look to keep housing on the agenda, the massive resources devoted to building datacentres is going to hit anyone wishing to increase housing supply.