Shadow Minister for Planning Tania Mihailuk has joined Member for Macquarie Fields, Anoulack Chanthivong to confirm that a Daley Labor Government will put people first by directing the Greater Sydney Commission (GSC) to revise unfair housing supply targets across the city, including the Macquarie Fields electorate.
Ms Mihailuk said existing targets were deliberately disadvantaging some parts of Sydney, forcing them to bear the brunt of rampant residential development.
Under the Liberals, the GSC has favoured blue ribbon suburbs with lenient development limits while concentrating development in Western Sydney.
Ms Mihailuk said if Labor won the March 23 election, she and Mr Daley would direct the GSC to go back to the drawing board.
The current housing supply targets have seen councils across Macquarie Fields and Holsworthy smothered by development while councils in the Premier’s backyard have not been allocated their fair share.
Figures from the GSC district plans show that Hunters Hill is expected to take only 150 new dwellings over five years, while Liverpool Council’s target of 8,250 and Campbelltown Council’s target of 6,800 exceeds this figure 55 and 45 times, respectively.
The trend is apparent across other councils as well, including targets of 300 dwellings for Mosman and Woollahra and 1,250 dwellings for the Premier’s own council of Willoughby.
These unfair targets come on top of additional dwellings delivered through the Liberals’ so-called ‘Planned Precincts’ scheme, which has allocated more than 8,650 dwellings between Glenfield and Minto.
Planned Precincts allow the Liberals to override local communities and councils to rezone entire areas for density increases without any obligation or commitment to provide essential education, health, transport or community infrastructure.
A Daley Labor Government would immediately scrap all planned precincts and put the Greater Sydney Commission back to work to fix the mess caused by the Liberals’ mismanagement of the planning system.
These announcements are the next limb of Daley Labor’s comprehensive planning system reform package, following policies to deliver affordable housing and to reform the state’s messy and fragmented building and construction regulations.
Quotes attributable to Shadow Minister for Planning, Tania Mihailuk
“At the moment, just like the light rail, and so many other wayward projects in Sydney, the planning system in NSW is a mess.
”Labor wants to stop this madness that has descended on Sydney and its long-suffering residents.
“We've got communities across Western Sydney being clobbered with overdevelopment, whilst communities in the Premier’s very own backyard are not accepting their fair share.
“The Premier is prepared to use the Greater Sydney Commission as a political football at the expense of a transparent, fair and proper planning system.
Quotes attributable to Member for Macquarie Fields, Anoulack Chanthivong
“The Liberal Government wants to take the bulldozers to our established suburbs to make them unrecognisable with high-rise development, bringing in thousands of new residents without a single commitment to new infrastructure.
“My long-running Stop the Squeeze campaign has resonated loud and clear in my electorate and in other parts of Sydney where they are fed up with the Liberal Government’s unfair overdevelopment agenda.
“The message to the State Liberal Government is clear – stop turning our local area into a developers’ dumping zone for more congestion, more high-rises and more urban splatter at the expense of our community’s character, our green open space and liveability.”
