New minister offers hope for housing affordability
In his first interview with Property Australia, New South Wales’ new Minister for Planning Anthony Roberts says housing affordability, supply and choice are the top three priorities.
Former premier Bob Carr famously declared “Sydney is full” in 2000, and in the following decade 23,000 people left NSW for greener pastures interstate each year.
But how the tables have turned.
Australia’s most populous state is projected to grow by more than 100,000 people every year until 2036, and new homes will be needed to accommodate an extra 2.1 million people.
According to Roberts (pictured), Sydney alone will need 664,000 new homes over the next 20 years to keep pace with demand.
“People want to live in their own homes near their families, near where they work and near good schools, services and amenities,” Roberts explains.
He says providing housing for essential workers – police officers, teachers, emergency service personnel, cleaners and child care workers – is a hallmark of a liveable, functioning city.
A city can’t be liveable if no one can afford to live there. Sydney’s median house price jumped to a record 1.1 million in the December quarter. This makes Sydney the second most unaffordable city in the world to buy a home, according to the latest Demographia International Affordability Survey.
“It’s important that those who service our community live near their jobs and families, and not just where they can afford.”
Roberts points to the record $22 billion pipeline of residential construction underway as evidence that the NSW Government is making some headway. This pipeline of 78,400 homes currently under construction is “more than double any other time in the state’s history”.
Last year, 72,445 new homes were approved, which Roberts says was “the highest ever approved in a single calendar year”.
“Sydney now has the highest amount of released and rezoned greenfield stock since land release programs began in the early 1980s. There is enough zoned and serviced greenfield land to support more than 80,000 new homes in greater Sydney, and a further 80,000 could be built when the infrastructure such as roads and water is available.”
But after more than a decade of undersupply, the housing challenge facing the government is enormous, and a range of policies must be in play. Even if the Minister’s hopes are realised, construction will still be playing catch-up to demand for many years to come.
Roberts says low-rise, medium sized homes, like terraces, dual occupancies and townhouses are currently missing from the picture, and the government is developing a design guide and housing code for medium density housing which would “fast-track” the assessment process.
He says the Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment Bill, released in early January 2017, will also create a “simpler and faster planning system”.
While Roberts takes on the planning portfolio at a critical time, he has achieved successful outcomes in other portfolios. As Minister for Fair Trading, Roberts drove reforms to the state’s fifty-year-old strata and community title laws. For many in the industry this was a vital and long overdue reform which now stands as a substantive policy achievement.
And as Resources and Energy Minister, he embarked on a series of energy market reforms, including deregulating electricity prices.
Roberts, who was an adviser to former prime minister John Howard and who spent two years as Mayor of Lane Cove, also served nine years in the Australian Army Reserve. Deployment to Bougainville taught him many things, he says, including “working in cooperation with others to achieve the desired outcome”.
Now, he is rolling up his sleeves to work with “councils, government agencies, the community and the private sector to deliver housing where it is needed”.
Read the full transcript with NSW Minister for Planning, the Hon Anthony Robert MP.