‘This fight is alive’: Premier declares war on NIMBYs

NSW Premier Chris Minns has issued an unapologetic call-to-arms to reverse the “culture of no” he says has constrained residential development across Sydney, acknowledging a generational shift in attitudes towards housing has not stamped out stiff opposition to density in established suburbs.

In a speech that took aim at councils and residents protesting high-rise development, Minns said older generations worried that the housing affordability and supply crisis would price their children out of Sydney had changed the tenor of the debate around urban density for the first time in NSW.

“But at the same time, we’ve got to resist the assumption that NIMBY-ism is dead and buried, or that it’s just lying dormant because it is ready to lurch up once again,” Minns told the crowd at an event run by the Centre for Independent Studies conservative think tank on Tuesday night.

“This fight is very much alive. We have to put our helmets on, and we need all the allies we can get.”

The Minns government this week rankled locals when it revealed plans to build 10,000 units around a future train station in Sydney’s east, as Labor forges ahead with an ambitious planning reform agenda to tackle its National Housing Accord target of delivering 377,000 new homes by mid-2029.

Minns said boosting housing stock remained an “urgent priority” for the government, and reopening the Woollahra heavy rail station as a catalyst for residential development was an “overdue decision”.

“There are fewer people living in Woollahra today than in 1970 which, I think, is a window into the culture that we’re trying to stop or change in NSW.

“It’s a culture of no, a culture that has effectively blocked new housing, pushed up prices and forced a generation to question whether they’ve got a future in the city their parents and their grandparents were members of.”

Minns called out residents’ opposition to an 11-storey apartment block proposed for the lower north shore suburb of Castlecrag, about eight kilometres from the CBD, where 33 new homes have been built in the past 35 years. And he pointed to one long-time Mosman resident’s “remarkable act of candour” in declaring residents in the suburb “are entitled because we’ve worked hard to live here”, after she launched a legal challenge against the government’s low- to mid-rise housing reforms.

“On one hand, we’re preserving certain established suburbs like a national museum exhibition, whether there’s something worth preserving or not, it’s unilateral in some of those communities.

“On the other hand, we’ve been adding a new street to the western fringe of Sydney every other week. A great city can’t survive as a museum. A city ... needs to evolve with the times.”

Minns said the state’s failure to build more homes had fostered generational inequality, and meant Sydney was “the second most expensive city in the world, behind only Hong Kong, and by some measures, it’s the 800th densest city”.

“We accepted a culture in NSW where it was easy to find an excuse to say no, rather than a reason to say yes. We had a situation where certain local councils, especially some of the wealthy councils, had used their planning powers to make it almost impossible to build homes in those places.”

Minns said housing targets had been “routinely ignored” by local councils – he named North Sydney, Woollahra, Hunters Hill and Mosman as some of the worst offenders – but noted the state government now had “the legislative power to override their decisions, and we are doing that”.

He said the Housing Delivery Authority, which has recommended 215 proposals comprising 79,000 dwellings for a fast-tracked approval pathway, had been “deliberately established with the view of knocking over a decision on the local council”, and was “an acknowledgement the system’s failing”.

“It’s almost like an outside-the-system funnel to get approvals done quickly, in recognition of the fact the squiggly mess that is the planning system isn’t working.

“We don’t want to do it … but I don’t have a choice.”

Minns was joined at the event by New Zealand Housing Minister Chris Bishop, a member of the country’s centre-right National Party, who said house prices had fallen in that country in response to policies to encourage more density – but he thinks they should drop a bit further.

Minns said his government had taken “direct inspiration” from New Zealand’s housing policies and the impact they had on affordability, particularly in Auckland. The changes included a surge in construction that flowed from reforms that made it easier to build infill housing; a reduction in housing prices, including rent, that followed the boost in residential construction; and a rise in younger people who moved into the redeveloped neighbourhoods and increased their vibrancy.

Bishop said housing policy battles were increasingly fought along generational, rather than political, lines. “Housing reform matters, and you can deploy whichever argument it takes you to get there.”

Minns suggested the NSW opposition was still grappling with its position on housing density, and he hoped the “forces of housing win over the forces of NIMBY-ism … Our best chance to hold the line and build the houses we need is a united front across both parties.”

Vaucluse Liberal MP Kellie Sloane, whom Labor has painted as anti-development, said on Sunday Woollahra was a “pro-housing suburb”, and the government should build higher in Edgecliff.

Residents and local councils have expressed significant reservations about the looming wave of development, voicing concerns about the character of their suburbs, the erosion of council powers, the erosion of employment precincts, and pressure on infrastructure and services.

Earlier this week, Planning Minister Paul Scully denied he had dismissed complaining residents as “un-Sydney-like” and “ignoring their collective responsibility”.

“It is a collective responsibility,” Scully told a budget estimates hearing on Monday.

“We’ve got geographic divide, social divide, social exclusion, as well as economic participation and productivity events, as a result of a sustained lack of building housing in NSW, particularly Sydney.

“Every day, thousands of people are being asked to travel from the west to the east to provide services in the city, in suburbs where they’ve largely no chance of living unless we expand supply.”

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