There was a great rally yesterday afternoon (Saturday 17th October 2026) at Goddard Park Concord, organised by the DRDA – Drummoyne Responsible Development Action Group. It was well organised with a lot of local people there, plus representation from action groups across Sydney. I was in really good company.
Many spoke about the issues they have with the NSW Labor Government’s abysmal development policies. There was a lot of useful comment and a lot of great signage. Chris Minns and Minister Scully did not show – they didn’t even send a minion to represent themselves. I was also asked to speak.
I ran out of time with my speech, so here it is for the record.
Hello fellow residents and special guests
I would like to acknowledge that we are on the lands of the Wangal people and pay respects to elders past, present and emerging.
Everybody needs a secure roof over their head. It’s a human right. And it supports a liveable community that’s part of who we are.
But unfortunately, most of the younger generation has been locked out of secure housing, along with older people too. And housing is a key part of the cost of living crisis. We are seeing a bipartisan failure at both federal and state level. And specifically, none of the NSW government’s housing targets are anything close to being met.
The overall approach isn’t working because the standard narratives about housing are supporting the same old, same old approaches. Both Canada Bay Council and the Greens want more housing done well in the right places. Doing this will take a fresh, broader look at what works overseas and also our own history. And of course, there are many factors affecting housing outcomes.
The current NSW Labor government, like the Liberal one before it, relies substantially on large developers to build housing. The government thinks that their job is to rezone land and provide developer incentives. They’re hoping that those developers will flood the market so the price of housing comes down. But of course, the developers won’t do that. So they take the incentives but build at their own pace, so the prices stay high and the crisis continues. As a councillor, I have seen that government rezoning is a disaster without local knowledge and the need for infrastructure more or less ignored. I call this “planning without planning”.
In contrast, look at what happened in Australia after World War 1 and World War 2. There were no incentives to private developers. There were state and federal government developers that directly created a huge amount of housing. They bought the land, designed the properties and paid the builders.
We need governments now to step up and directly develop new housing – starting with social and public housing for those in greatest need.
The next point is the height and scale of new housing. The government is imposing tall residential zoning of up to 50 storeys across Canada Bay in the wrong locations, where the traffic is already unmanageable. We are getting towers mainly because that’s what developers want to build. But we could better solve our housing problems with medium rise of, say, four to five storeys. Building that height of apartments, we could still achieve any housing targets we wanted. Medium rise is human scale and costs less to build with lower strata costs. European cities are predominantly 5 to 7 storeys, with many successful housing programs to reduce speculation and make housing more affordable.
Meanwhile, the NSW Labor government, like the Liberals before them, is ruling by decree and ignoring the community. And they have continued taking away councils’ planning powers.
The worst disaster is the LMR – Low and Mid Rise program and with it the Affordable Housing Infill Bonus, where the property goes back to the developer after only 15 years. This is a government scam to create so-called “affordable housing” that’s unaffordable. It’s currently destroying St Georges Crescent in Drummoyne.
SSD (State Significant development) is just a wildcard that gives developers what they want.
LMR is putting bad developments in the wrong places, sucking investment out of the TODs – Transport Oriented Development precincts which have only had a handful of DAs (that’s just one hand) since they were zoned about 2 years ago, with the Homebush TOD in the wrong place. So the strategy is wrong and poor execution makes it worse. Just don’t call any of these programs a reform.
What is required now? Firstly, governments need to develop housing themselves, starting with social and public housing.
Secondly, the NSW government needs to abolish LMR and the infill affordable housing bonus.
Thirdly, government must restore councils’ planning powers. Councils should decide zoning and planning proposals themselves without government approval. If necessary, the government could negotiate housing targets with councils. Let’s stop the government trying to do Council’s job, give the powers back to councils and let the councils sort it out.
Lastly we need infrastructure: the schools, transport upgrades and much much more.
That’s what we need from the next NSW government. Please consider how you vote.