To secure his political destiny, Minns faces date with density

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NSW Labor leader Chris Minns told the Liberal-heavy Sydney Institute annual dinner on Tuesday that he knows all too well that his time as premier is limited. Minns acknowledged to the crowd – which included most of his cabinet – that he will eventually be relegated to just another premier-past, immortalised in a portrait hanging alongside his predecessors in the halls of NSW Parliament.

It was an honest admission: the clock starts ticking for a leader as soon as they assume the top job. But the Minns Labor government has not felt like it was in a race against time during its first months in power. Drawn-out battles with the unions over public sector pay, unnecessary distractions over plum appointments, the early sacking of a minister over a conflict of interest and criticism of the police minister for mishandling a protest sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.

Illustration by John ShakespeareCredit:

It has been a slow, and at times scrappy, start to government for Labor, creating a sense that the party has struggled to find its feet in power. But as the year draws to a close, the Minns government is finally stepping up a gear and making ground with undoubtedly the most difficult but important policy issue: housing. Within weeks, the government will release its much-needed plan to boost housing supply, including affordable and social housing, and dramatically increase density in NSW.

Minns did not mince his words at the Sydney Institute. “Housing affordability and availability is the largest single challenge facing both the people of NSW and its government,” he said, repeating the worrying figures that show just how behind Sydney has fallen when it comes to building homes.

Australia needs to build 1.2 million dwellings over the next five years. NSW alone needs 377,000 new homes but the country’s most populous state builds fewer than other jurisdictions manage. Last year, NSW built just 48,000, Victoria 59,000.

Chris Minns has declared he wants to turbocharge development to address housing shortages.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer, Janie Barrett

Density, often a dirty word in areas where NIMBYism is a powerful force, needs to be embraced. Minns’ speech referred to the NSW Productivity Commission’s work, which supports the case for higher-density living. Finding infill development close to existing infrastructure is more cost-effective than greenfield housing. It could make a home as much as $75,000 cheaper. That is a powerful argument for Minns to prosecute in a housing-affordability crisis.

He kicked off the conversation about density just weeks after the March election when he told the Herald’s 2050 Summit that Sydney needed “to go up, not out”. Given overdevelopment so often features as a key local issue in election campaigns, it was unsurprising that Minns chose to unleash such language after Labor had won, not before. It could have been electorally poisonous.

Regardless, Minns was right to send the message that Sydney must become comfortable with apartment-style living, as are other major cities around the world. Minns was not proposing that towers should be the only answer to the housing crisis, although some Labor hardheads were uncomfortable with his early rhetoric. He now talks more broadly about density.

While Minns is not yet prepared to detail what the government’s housing policy will look like, my colleagues Michael McGowan and Max Maddison have uncovered much of the plan. It includes designating seven sites around Metro stations as priority development zones, overriding potential opposition from local councils. The burden of meeting the housing targets will be spread across the north shore, inner west and western suburbs. There will be towers, but also terraces, townhouses, villas and low-rise apartments.

In his early premiership, Minns has often been too cautious. He took a small-target strategy to the election and stuck to it. But there are strong signs that when it comes to dealing with the housing challenge, he will take a different approach. In his push to dramatically boost supply, he also has to make sure development is done well.

He made the right decision to seize some parkland from the Moore Park Golf Course for the creation of a new central park amid increased housing density around Green Square, Zetland and Waterloo. Nine holes will be sacrificed for the new park, much to the outrage of the club, which is run by a private operator under a service agreement with the government. It was a courageous call and Minns will need to make more of them, which he conceded in his Sydney Institute address.

“When it comes to housing, Sydney for too long has not kept up with its changing population,” Minns said on Tuesday night. “If we are going to tackle this crisis, we need to think big and bold. And we need to act fast.”

His government was slow off the mark after winning power, but Minns has finally discovered the accelerator. A big, bold housing policy could be Minns’ best legacy when the time comes for his portrait to join the wall of former premiers.

Alexandra Smith is the Herald’s state political editor.

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