A leading Sydney mayor has described Chris Minns as a “dictator” and “bully” for threatening to go “nuclear” on councils who oppose his major housing reforms.
In an exclusive sit-down with news.com.au, New South Wales Premier Mr Minns warned the skyrocketing cost of rents and ever-rising home prices had forced hordes of young people to flee the city in recent years.
According to the NSW Productivity Commission, Sydney lost twice as many residents aged 30 to 40 than it gained in the five years between 2016 and 2021.
The premier’s solution is to dramatically increase the supply of new homes via an overhaul of planning and zoning, lifting density in key transport-supported suburbs.
Mr Minns warned “the city doesn’t have a future unless we make these changes”.
Fairfield Mayor Frank Carbone, a staunch critic of the plan, said he isn’t against housing and wants more supply in his area – particularly affordable dwellings.
“But we want to put the housing in the right place and in the right way without impacting people’s quality of life,” Mr Carbone said.
“The problem with the reforms is the government’s talking about consulting with councils and how we all need to work together on this, but unfortunately, they’re not consulting at all.
“Chris Minns is going out and bullying councils into not having a say. He’s trying to stop people that want to speak up and quite clearly that’s not consultation, that’s [a] dictatorship.”
The ‘nuclear’ option
Fairfield isn’t the only local government to express concern about the government’s plans, with the Labor-controlled Inner West Council also flagging issues.
In the wake of the push-back, Mr Minns told The Sydney Morning Herald that he’d employ “the nuclear option” against opponents if he had to.
“Yeah, I probably made it sound more Oppenheimer-ish than it actually is,” a reflective Mr Minns told news.com.au.
“We want to sit down with councils, we want to work with them about how they grow their suburbs and their communities. Provided we get the number of houses, then we’re happy to do a deal.
“We’re pretty agnostic about where and how housing will be built, but what we can’t do is what’s happened in New South Wales for decades, which is, hey, I’d love to help you, but you can’t build any housing around here.”
Mr Carbone said the remark was yet another example of “Chris Minns trying to bully his way through”.
“We’re not opposed to having more homes. And Chris Minns would lead people to believe that councils haven’t approved housing – but councils have been approving housing for years.”
During the last government, Fairfield Council drafted a new Local Environment Plan (LEP) – the main planning tool that shapes the future of the community and oversees development.
“It’s been sitting on a desk at the Department of Planning for two-and-a-half years,” Mr Carbone said.
“And now Chris Minns has had it sitting on his desk for the last 12 months [since the election]. Why hasn’t he released the planning for all the new homes that all the councils have done?”
Mr Carbone said the premier had “poured more concrete into the Rockdale sinkholes” that formed above the M6 tunnel construction site, threatening to swallow a commercial building, than “into any foundation of new homes”.
“Chris Minns hasn’t built one new home,” he said. “And his policy won’t build one new home. All it does is provide the ability for people to build, but we already have that.”
He said there’s capacity right now to begin immediate construction on 20,000 new homes across Fairfield Council, but “no-one can afford to”.
“It’s affordability that’s the problem. People can’t afford to build homes. Chris Minns is lying to the people of NSW. The problem with housing is affordability.”
Focusing on the wrong problem
Government taxes comprise an estimated half of the cost of building a new home, Mr Carbone said, and removing some – or all – of those would go a long way in improving the affordability of housing.
Last year, the State Government broadened the infrastructure contribution applied to the cost of new dwellings, raising it to $12,000.
Mr Carbone described it as a “secret tax” that only made building a new home more expensive.
“If Chris Means wanted people to be able to afford to buy a home, rather than peddling up to developers and trying to give them a helping hand, he should be giving first-home buyers a helping hand,” he said.
The NSW Government could axe stamp duty and “work with the Federal Government to take the GST off the cost of new homes for first-time buyers”.
“As a council, we would also take all our taxes off,” he pledged.
“Take the taxes off for the first home buyers and give people a chance to put a roof over their heads.
“What we need to do here is encourage new homes to be built, so it provides a greater supply of existing homes, because when you build a new home, a family will leave that existing home, and that old home becomes available for others.
“And you certainly wouldn’t want to tax something if you want more of it. It’s just tax, tax, tax. The government is not helping people, the government is hindering people.
“Right now, the government if profiteering on the misery of young families who are trying to buy a home and that’s just not the way forward.”
Everyone needs to chip in
While Mr Minns walked back his “nuclear option” comment in his sit-down with news.com.au, he did issue something of an ominous warning.
When asked if councils have too much power to control the flow of housing supply, he said: “They’ve got a lot of power, but the State Government has the power to override state and local government decisions. Now, we don’t want to do that. Provided we can get an agreement, [we won’t].”
As well as council criticism, a number of local community groups in tightly held suburbs like Balmain and Haberfield have also mobilised to fight back.
“It’s a bit of a worry when even modest changes [proposed] by the government have been met by absolute resistance and opposition to it,” Mr Minns said.
“I think they’ve given the game away in some respects.
“I think there’s a group who are opposed, who are just not going to change. They know that young people can’t live here, and they’ve made a decision that that’s not more important than the way their street looks.
“They don’t want any changes to their neighbour’s property, and they don’t want any changes to their community, even the bloke two blocks over’s place either. They’re just resolutely against it.”
The premier concedes he won’t change the minds of those staunch NIMBYs, so he’s targeting those who are on the fence.
“I think there’s another group who are really reasonable, who are sceptical about it because they’ve seen density done in parts of Sydney and they say to themselves, ‘This doesn’t look good’.
“[In some past instances], there’s too many people, there’s not enough public transport, there’s not enough open space.
“And I want to make a big pitch to them. The last thing I want to do is abuse them or take them on or fight them. I want to convince them that we can do density and [make it] beautiful.
“You get young people in, it becomes vibrant, it’s an exciting place, there’s open space, there’s access to public transport.”
The government is determined to proceed with its reforms, insisting the changes will create tens of thousands of new homes while having a “modest” impact on individual suburbs.
“This is not an attempt to demolish Sydney and start again,” Mr Minns said. “These are pretty modest in the scheme of things.
“A little bit more will go a long, long way. Not doing anything is not a solution. Cities that don’t do that lose their vibrancy, their character. Ironically enough, you do change the city by not changing it all.”
Mr Minns concedes some of his plans won’t be popular, but said he’s motivated by the countless stories of struggle from people across the state who are struggling to make ends meet.
Scenes of dozens, and in some cases hundreds of desperate renters lined up outside available rental properties, battling to find somewhere suitable to live, will only become more prevalent – and worse.
“If you look at the statistics, a big number of the people that are waiting in vain out the front of an open house are thinking about leaving. So, it’s either get that property or get out of town.
“That is intolerable for a city of the future and that’s the whole purpose of these changes. That’s the reason we’re doing this.
“Change is long, it’s going to take time but I promise you the changes that we make today will make a major difference in the years ahead and the reverse is true as well.”