By 2030, Australia would have a population of over six million people. That would need another 2.7 million more homes, 125,000 retirement facilities and 24,000 additional hospital beds.

However, due to the rapidly graying Australian population, fewer people are paying taxes needed to fund the needed infrastructure, Property Council of Australia (PCA) Chief Executive Peter Verwer warned on Thursday.

Mr Verwer, who launched the PCA's Make My City Work Campaign in Canberra, noted that in 1970, there were 7.5 taxpayers for every retiree. The number is now down to five people of working age and is expected to further decline to 2.7 by 2050.

To address the growing need for more housing facilities, Mr Verwer suggested that Australia study the ways its Asian neighbours effectively planned its cities. He said the Australian federal, state and local governments must commit to a new deal for Australian cities,

"It is impossible to go to a Chinese city and to look at the plans for that city without seeing the words 'urban productivity programme'," 9 News quoted Mr Verwer.

He said he was not surprised by such developments because of the rapid pace of growth in China and the rest of Asia which is urbanising at the rate of a city the size of Adelaide every 5.5 days.

Mr Verwer challenged the Council of Australian Governments and the federal government to implement clearer city planning policies and to put in place new federal incentives and penalties so cities would be encouraged to have better housing policies at state and local levels.

He recommended that the government should have a home affordability target as well as a plan to saturate cities with childcare centres. He added the target should be a percentage of the average wage to drive the building of houses and address the massive shortfall.

He attributed the lower productivity of Australian workers to people spending too much time sitting in traffic jam and the lower labour participation rate in Australia to the difficulty of parents in finding child care centres to drop children off before they go to work.

Mr Verwer suggested that Victoria copy the South Australia model in which every home is within a 20-minute drive from a childcare centre. If states meet or fail to reach the targets, he said incentives and penalties should be based around the federal government's payment programme.