As I’ve said before, housing is the single biggest challenge facing this state.
That’s because it’s a problem that breeds other problems.
If we don’t address housing first – if we don’t increase supply – we can’t address social mobility.
We can’t say to young people thinking about their next job and next opportunity, where will you live?
How will you progress in this great state?
We can’t lift our productivity rates, or staff our essential services. We can’t increase our national birthrate, or properly confront the evils of domestic violence in our communities.
Many of you are businesspeople.
And it’s important that you are able to run healthy, profitable companies in New South Wales.
But right now – by just being in this industry – you’re also part of a bigger community mission.
When I speak to people in construction, I usually find a natural alignment here, between the government and business.
You want to build houses – and we want to see them built.
You want to get things moving quicker – and we want to speed things up as well.
And I have been to many lunches and many events, and spoken to many people in the construction sector, as well as UDIA members, who have spoken to me about their frustrations about getting things moving in this space.
It’s a massive priority for us.
We need each other.
Governments can make all the zoning decisions that we like, but we don’t lay bricks and concrete doesn’t get poured, it’s a paper building boom, that no one can live in.
And businesses can design the best projects in the world, but if governments are standing in your way, if approvals are dragging out, then it’s very hard to invest with confidence.
I will freely admit that – on the government side of things – our planning system is not been as it should be, and hasn’t been for a long time.
Since 1992, the state has built six dwellings per 1,000 people every twelve months.
By contrast, in Victoria over the same period of time, they’ve built eight houses per 1000 people.
And Queensland leads the east coast with a massive nine houses per 1000 people every 12 months.
Now that to me shows that we’ve got a planning system that isn’t keeping pace with the problems that we’re confronting.
It’s a system that holds back business, that adds extra costs to new projects.
A system that, far too often, looks for excuses to delay action and investment, rather than reasons to support it.
And I’ve been particularly aggrieved and concerned speaking to a lot of people, some of whom are in this room that say, when they do business in Queensland in particular, there’s a focus or a culture about getting to yes.
Rather than in New South Wales, where if a form isn’t filled in correctly, it’s back in the queue.
Now, I think it would be fair of me to say that this is the system we inherited.
And that is what we have sought to reform over the past twelve months.
But I prefer to say, the job isn’t done and that we’re not getting the performance that we need in order to spark the construction sector in this state.
Around this time last year – before we had announced much of our housing plan – I said that our reforms would have five goals:
We needed more density.
We needed more well-located homes, near transport and other infrastructure.
We needed more social and affordable housing.
We needed to make sure that those homes were well designed and well constructed, that if people who were going to buy their first apartment had confidence in what they were purchasing, and particularly if it was off the plan.
And we needed to build them quickly.
Since then, we’ve embarked on the biggest rezoning in modern Australian history.
Our Transport Oriented Development program – increasing density around 45 train stations.
And secondly, our low and midrise reforms – will allow greater diversity of housing in places where people want to live, next to transport and infrastructure and jobs.
We then entered into negotiations on Rosehill racecourse. That will potentially add an additional 25,000 homes – well built homes with open space – next to a new metro station on the Metro West line.
And last month, we announced our new five year housing targets – to ensure Sydney’s growth is shared across the city, in the east as well as in the west.
That was just the first phase of our reforms, which leant heavily on the private sector – on businesses that a represented in the room today, businesses like yours.
But I also know there a number of social housing organisations that are in the room here today – who are doing incredible work giving people a roof over their head and a better shot at life.
I don’t see this as a question of public versus private.
Both of them are crucial in the housing mix, building for the next generation of young Australians.
We want every sector, in every corner of the economy, working at full capacity, and all pulling in the same direction here.
It’s all with a vision and purpose for more housing in this state.
That’s why, in last week’s Budget, we announced the biggest investment in public housing in NSW history.
$5.1 billion – to replace, to build 8,400 homes.
Half will be going to women and children escaping domestic violence, who are in a horrible, unsafe, terrible household.
The budget also included $450 million to build essential worker housing – that’s to help nurses and paramedics, police officers and teachers, live closer to where they work.
We’ve conducted an audit of the land owned by government agencies, and that’s with a view of looking for places to build.
The first tranche of these sites has now been selected.
We expect to see more than 20,000 new homes in these places, either delivered by the NSW Government, or with our partners in the private development sector.
It’s been a big year for housing policy and major reform.
We’ve had the most significant rezoning in the state’s history, followed by the largest public housing spend in the state’s history.
We are throwing everything we can at this problem.
Some of that is openly accepting that governments can do better, we must to better.
And in that spirit, I’m happy to air some further ideas that we’re currently pursuing.
We want to hear from you as well.
There are good ideas in the industry and the sector, to make this state operate better and get more housing underway in a short period of time.
We want to hear them.
And more importantly, I want to steal them.
And take credit for them.
One of these examples is with the new Western Sydney airport and the Aerotropolis.
Many people came to us with frustrations about the project.
The Commonwealth has been building the airport for six years now.
But when we came to government, there wasn’t the funding that we needed for critical road infrastructure.
There was also issues and concerns about water connections for those fast growing suburbs, so that we could realise the promise of a jobs boom.
Perhaps most concerningly, many firms were being shuffled between agencies, not getting answers or commitments that they needed to allocate capital and get on with the job.
So, two weeks ago, we made a decision after listening to you. And we announced a new position of the Coordinator General.
Tom Gellibrand and Infrastructure NSW will be tasked with clearing those bottlenecks. Their job will be to deliver the infrastructure that the airport needs.
What wasn’t as widely reported at the time was that this role also includes a focus on housing.
Essentially, this means that – when land is rezoned or released for housing – the Coordinator General will be able to direct agencies to meet the infrastructure needs and support new housing developments.
No more departmental politics holding up projects.
Instead, all of our relevant agencies, working together – with the same shared end.
Departmental silos drive myself and my colleagues absolutely crazy. And internal politics, we can have no role for it when we’re attempting to meet what this is. And that is an absolute priority for the government.
Friends, I know that economic conditions are tough right now.
Many have got increasing building material costs.
There are admitted labour shortages in the economy.
And there are barriers to accessing finance.
So, over the next six months, we will be exploring how the state can more directly assist here.
By way of looking at ways of securing finance – and looking closely at the costs state governments direct at developers.
That’s all with a view of increasing the viability of housing projects and speeding up construction.
And we’re investigating several options, but two stand out:
Firstly whether the State Government could act as guarantor for some development loans when projects are assessed by financial institutions to satisfy debt requirements.
Secondly, whether a government commitment to pre-purchase a specified number of houses could provide confidence that lenders need, for developers to get on and start construction.
As a Government, we want to have your back here.
We want to see you doing well, building homes and employing workers in this state.
But there’s more to it than that.
As the UDIA puts its – you are ‘city shapers’.
We’re not just building homes here.
We are building communities.
Shaping a place like Sydney is a tremendous responsibility.
Our task is to address the housing crisis, while creating a better city in the process.
That means building with quality.
It means surrounding those houses with vibrant communities that people want to live in and they want to raise families in.
Providing them with schools and greenspace and hospitals that are essential parts of a good life.
It also means protecting our natural assets – the beaches, the river, the bushlands that make Sydney famous around the world and a wonderful place to live.
Government has the biggest responsibility here.
But there’s a massive opportunity for builders and developers too.
One I know many of you take up every single day of the week.
To design your buildings with pride.
To build them to the highest standard.
And to help facilitate the kinds of communities that turn houses into homes.
It’s a massive challenge – one that sits on the government’s shoulders but also on the industry’s shoulders.
The challenge is to provide houses for the next generation of young Australians and ensure that we do not become a city without grandchildren.
This task is not beyond us, however.
With the right plans, the right policies, with the right allies – we can house our people and build a state that we all love to call home, and that we all love to live in
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