Thanks Matilda for that wonderful welcome to this land and I’d like to acknowledge the Dharug people as well.
Thanks David for that introduction and for assembling this huge crowd. And the Housing Now!
organisation that’s done amazing things for the state.
And when I was on route to this conference this morning, and I heard there was a Parramatta stadium, I thought, “Oh my God, he’s got 30,000 people here for it. That’s incredible.”
And then I remembered Parramatta fans only come out if they’re battling for the wooden spoon.
Well, the last time they won a comp, they burned down the stadium. So, we’ve got to be careful about the Parramatta Eels.
Thanks David for that introduction, it’s amazing to see the assemblage of this coalition in New South Wales. And the truth is that we’ve made something like this for a very long time in the state.
One frustrating things, I think, in public life is that it does seem easier to organise against something, rather than for something.
If you’re protesting against a new development, you might have the loudest voices onside, you might fill the local town hall on a weeknight, you might draw more attention in the media, even if the quiet majority disagrees of the local population disagrees with you on the need for more housing.
But if you look at this campaign and Housing Now! in particular, you can see how wide and positive the fight for housing really is.
And I’ve seen so many people that I know, from builders in this space to federal members of parliament like Michelle, to my state colleagues and senior people from planning, but also many people from the trade union movement, like Mark Moorey and Pat from the Police Association. The Treasurer’s here, Daniel Mookhey, as well.
So, this is an impressive coalition from across the New South Wales, all committed to change.
And the truth is, if you do run a trade union, and your members who are finding it harder and harder to live close to work, and seeing their pay rises eaten up as a result of increased housing costs, you know that something needs to change.
If you’re a business, even a small business, you see the productivity drain, when workers are pushed further and further away from jobs and opportunities, or when they’re leaving town altogether in the prime of their working life and potentially moving to another state or another jurisdiction, away from your firm.
If you’re in government, you’re finding it harder to staff your essential services, when paramedics and teachers can no longer afford to live near their local hospital or school.
Or if you’re a women’s organisation, you see how the housing crisis is keeping women and children in dangerous situations, because often in a very expensive city like Sydney, there may be no place to go.
If you’re a charity group or a faith group, you’re experiencing a growing demand for help, when the rent is going up and housing is scarce, and people are desperate.
Or if you’re a grandparent and you see your kids and your grandkids moving out of town, hoping that they will stay close to you and be part of the community in which they grew up.
What unites us all here today is that we collectively refuse to go along with this or accept it as inevitable.
And I think, if there was an organising principle it would be that whatever it takes, we must give our kids a future in this city and this state.
Friends, last year I joined you all here in Parramatta to launch this campaign.
We talked about how, for decades now, this state has been outbuilt by both Victoria and Queensland when it came to new houses.
We’ve built six houses per 1,000 people every 12 months. In Victoria, eight houses per 1000 people, and Queensland, incredibly, have produced nine houses per 1000 people every 12 months.
As I said that day, our cities are not museums.
They can’t be preserved forever almost like a piece of history.
They have to change with the times.
And most importantly, they have to grow as the community grows.
Which is why, a year ago, we set out the case for change in this state.
It was still early on in the piece – but we established five principles for housing reform that day:
- We needed more density.
- We needed well located homes around transport infrastructure.
- We needed more social and affordable housing.
- We needed to make sure these new homes were well designed and of course, well built.
- And, lastly, we needed to build them quickly as possible.
Since then, we’ve undertaken the biggest reforms to planning and zoning in Australian history. To build tens of thousands of houses around train stations and transport hubs.
And I think it’s important to note, in the Treasurer’s budget this year, we followed that up with the biggest investment in social and public housing in New South Wales history.
With $5.1 billion to build 8,400 new homes.
And friends, half of those homes will go to victim survivors of domestic violence.
I think it’s important to note that much of the government’s reform agenda, driven over the last 18 months by Kirsten and Paul in Planning, was actually generated by Housing Now!
By a group of people sitting around the table and developing the lowest hanging fruit to get more density into the system as soon as possible. We grabbed that and we ran with it.
In twelve months, we’ve shifted the window of what is possible on housing.
We have allowed for more density.
We have allowed more well located homes.
We have invested in social housing.
And we have promoted quality design, in the building of that housing.
But the frustrating truth is, we haven’t got there on the final principle, which is building these houses quickly.
We wanted to be here a year on, at this same conference, celebrating new houses coming online, with New South Wales families taking the keys for their new home and as a result, their new life.
Unfortunately, the truth is, that’s not happening fast enough.
Today, we have released a review into the housing sector conducted by our state’s productivity commission.
The report finds, in very blunt terms that we are not, in their words, ‘building enough homes right now’.
According to the latest ABS data, we completed 46,000 new homes in the year to March. Which is nowhere near where we need to be under the national goals that the New South Wales government signed up to.
More worryingly, the average completion time for new apartments has increased from 22 months in 2015 to 30 months in 2023.
And by some measurements, productivity in the construction industry is lower today than it was even in the 1990s.
Now, I think the truth is part of that is cyclical, and we have to take into consideration prevailing economic cycles.
Since 2018, construction costs have risen by 30%. That’s driven by higher prices for raw materials like steel and timber.
In that time the cost of land acquisition has also risen by a massive 50%.
As the report notes, much needed public infrastructure and has funnelled a lot of materials and labour into major civil work projects.
And over the past two years, everybody in this room and anyone that has a mortgage and anyone that runs a business will tell you, interest rates have more than doubled the cost of financing for these important projects.
But there’s a lot that’s still under our control in the New South Wales government that we could be doing, and we’re hoping to get right.
Over the past year, the Planning Department has been working on getting the details right when it comes to the enormous process of rezoning.
Now I know, and I’ve heard many times, that many people in this room don’t believe that we’ve gone far enough.
And to them I would ask for a little bit more patience.
Today’s Productivity Commission report gives us food for thought on where we can go further, and that’s something we are going to be making changes on.
But the feedback I’ve been receiving all year, and the Treasurer and the Productivity Commissioner have obviously also heard as he’s done the rounds, is that as a state, we’re making it too hard, way too hard, for people to build homes.
So, while we’ve taken steps, when you consider the face of the crisis, we need to be taking strides.
That is why we recently tasked Infrastructure NSW as Co-ordinator General, to take control of planning around the Aerotropolis. To step in and make decisions on infrastructure and housing across Western Sydney.
It’s why we established the Housing Committee of Cabinet, to make quicker decisions and get housing decisions approved in a faster time.
Housing is highly regulated and obviously that’s for good reason, but in too many cases, that regulation is impossibly slow and impenetrable.
And when you consider it was quicker 10 years ago and quicker in other jurisdictions today, then something needs to change.
For after all, how can we expect people to invest in New South Wales we can’t tell them how long it will take to get the approval and the shovel in the ground, before they even begin construction?
If you look at the system, we’ve repeatedly added new rules on top of the old ones, without taking stock and stepping back and looking at what the overall impact would be.
So, in light of all of that, in the coming weeks, the New South Wales Government will announce its next round of planning reforms for New South Wales.
It will be designed to speed up approvals, cut red tapes, and at the end of the day, build more homes.
It’s worth laying down a few principles today as to what these reforms will be.
This is what we know. We know that there are too many individual, New South Wales government agencies, slowing down the system.
Once you’ve run the gauntlet of Planning, you’re left waiting for Transport for New South Wales or Sydney Water or local government to give you the green light.
This can’t sit on public servant’s desk for months on end, waiting for a decision, when the cost of construction is going through the roof.
So we know concurrences are taking too long.
We also know that other states, particularly Queensland, do this much quicker and much better.
We have listened and we’re going to act.
Working with the Planning Department, we will reform concurrences, so the New South Wales Government has its own house in order.
I also don’t think the system has responded as it should, acknowledging the nature of the challenge, the crisis, the problem that’s in front of us.
The time is right for a state significant planning approval pathway specifically to confront the housing emergency.
We’re working with Planning and other agencies to design and deliver an approval pathway that cuts out as much unnecessary red tape and allows us to properly unclog the system.
This will form part of our response to the Productivity Commissioner’s report.
Friends, I want to be speaking here with all of you about how we’re on track to end the housing crisis in Australia’s largest city and one of the world’s most expensive cities.
But the truth is, there is still much to do to fix this system.
The next few months are absolutely critical.
Our government’s going to need your help. We need to leverage the work of Housing Now!, the work that you’ve already done to build community momentum and change for much needed housing reform in the state.
We need to get this right.
We need to get the construction moving.
We need to build these houses, for the sake of the next generation of young Australians.
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