More housing sooner in Canberra sounds good but delivering is hard

In the next half a decade, a little more than 10 per cent of those dwelling sites will be for detached housing.

This is the first indicative land release program - a document which is released annually - put out under a new planning system and Planning Minister Chris Steel.

Change takes time, then appears to have happened all at once.

Between the planning system overhaul and a minister keen to talk about "missing middle" housing like terraces and duplexes, there is a clearer picture of how the government intends to fit more housing into a city with finite space.

It will have a clear, coherent - and easily condensed - pitch for the election.

However, the government has in the recent past failed to deliver the number of dwelling sites it has indicatively planned.

It takes more than sticking a few survey pegs in the ground to get land ready for sale, it's true. That's partly why the government says it handed $50 million to the Suburban Land Agency to assist its land release efforts.

But this official looking government plan will be worth little more than the most political of election commitments unless the government sets out clearly how it can actually deliver the homes.

Meanwhile, just 40 public housing dwellings are due to be released in the next financial year, the program reveals.

The ACT had 3189 approved applications on the housing waiting list, government figures updated on May 6 showed.

The average wait for priority housing was 232 days. A person with an approved, but non-prioritised application, faces a wait of more than five years.

The Greens, Labor's partners in government, have made it very clear public housing is a priority for them.

While increased housing supply will be welcomed by a growing population eager to find places to live, the government's seeming lack of attention on public housing will remain a sore point in the territory's progressive coalition.