The NSW Liberals last year overwhelmingly backed a bold push to develop homes around every train station and light rail stop in Sydney,in what would be a far more ambitious housing policy than Labor’s plan which the Coalition is now attempting to scupper.
Roseville Station has been identified as one of the transport oriented development sites.Steven Siewert
However,despite 60 per cent of party members,including some state MPs,supporting the motion at the Liberals’ state convention in November,the opposition will this week attempt to kill the Minns government’s transport-oriented development program with a bill before parliament.
The motion at the convention called on the state parliamentary party to take major steps towards solving the worsening housing crisis,including “rezoning all lots within a 5-minute walking radius of existing train and metro stations in greater Sydney according to R4 high density”.
It also called for all lots within a “10-minute walking radius of existing train and metro stations in greater Sydney” to be rezoned R3 medium density along with lots within a 5-minute walking radius of a light rail stop within greater Sydney and Newcastle.
However,the Opposition’s planning spokesman Scott Farlow.
The opposition spokesman for planning,Scott Farlow,says the Liberals will vote against the government’s housing plan.Edwina Pickles
“The Liberal Party members’ and our upper house motions are in line with the party’s support for additional housing,including increasing density along transport corridors to meet ambitious housing targets,done in consultation with local communities,” Farlow said.
“The Minns Labor government’s approach put the cart before the horse by announcing the housing targets many months after their TODs. The opposition’s bill would allow councils to design how they will accommodate increased densities in their communities.”
The move exposes an emerging split on housing within the party. Liberal senator Andrew Bragg,who spoke in favour of the housing motion in November,said Liberals had to be anti-NIMBY.
“We need to be unambiguously on the side of supply and development and turning the tables on cultural concern about developers. If you don’t like developers,you must want the government to solve the housing problem and that is not liberalism,” Bragg said.
“If we are pro-NIMBY,it is impossible to deliver intergenerational fairness. We need to be pro-supply,pro-development and anti-NIMBY.”
Federal Liberal MP for Hughes Jenny Wares said governments could not afford to waste any more time and had to push on with developing around transport links.
“We are in a crisis and we have to throw everything at this problem because we cannot keep moving further and further out west. Planning policy for many years has been around increasing density around existing transport links and where schools and hospitals are located,” Ware said.
“Australian and Sydneysiders have been traditionally wedded to large backyards however the reality is if people and our next generations,especially Generation Z and Millennials,wish to live in the areas they grew up,the only choice is for us to increase density around existing infrastructure.”
Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic,who was also a vocal supporter of the motion at the convention,said she appreciated concerns about the TOD program being a “cookie cutter model”.
“But we need to find a way forward and that sometimes means having uncomfortable conversations in areas that may not always be comfortable with development,” Kovacic said.
Legalise Cannabis MP Jeremy Buckingham said the Coalition had “blown its own policy and credibility on the housing supply issue to pieces”.
“In time of housing and rental supply crisis,all MPs and parties should be working constructively. Instead,the Coalition has chosen rank hypocrisy and partisan politicking over the interests of a generation who’ve been shut out of homeownership,” Buckingham said.
Planning Minister Paul Scully has described the bill as “anti-family,anti-young people,anti-downsizer and anti-tradie as it will cost homes and jobs”.
“Worse still,it has been introduced with no alternate plan to produce the housing that NSW needs to stop the exodus of young people,” Scully said.
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