Flanked by five Labor and Liberal mayors on Thursday afternoon,Minns again singled out the absent Moore for criticism.
NSW Premier Chris Minns flanked by Sydney mayors on Thursday afternoon.Rhett Wyman
“[The City of Sydney has] got really rigid rules in place that forbid residential developments in the CBD,” he said at a press conference at Forest Lodge to bolster the government’s housing strategy.
“Now,I don’t think that’s consistent with an international city.”
Across town,Moore returned fire. The premier had his facts wrong,she said,for “the second time in six months”,adding the suggestion residential development had been stopped in the CBD was untrue,noting 3200 dwellings constructed in the past five years and another 5000 in the pipeline.
The intensifying war of words between two of Sydney’s most senior elected officials came after Moore the state government of rushing through “half-baked” housing reforms in a “one-size-fits-all approach that invites a series of unintended consequences”.
At the press conference on Thursday,Minns said the City of Sydney council is required,like all the city’s councils,to help meet the National Housing Accord targets of 378,000 new homes by July 2029,adding existing development rules were incongruent with Sydney’s status as a global city.
“I don’t think you’re going to get the vibrancy,the culture that you need in cities that you see around the world that tend to work like Chicago and New York and Los Angeles,” he said.
“And frankly,if we’re going to say to ... all the mayors that you have to take your share of housing ... we have to be able to say in the middle of Sydney CBD,in an international city,they’ve got to have an increase in residential development as well.”
Minns said the economics of converting commercial spaces to residential housing probably didn’t stack up. However,he believed there was scope to construct more housing closer to the CBD.
In comments provided to this masthead later on Friday,Minns pointed to the recent report on housing by the NSW Productivity Commission which “found that Sydney CBD is the cheapest place to create residential housing.”
“Yet the City of Sydney incentivises commercial over residential development across the CBD,” he said.
“The City of Sydney has almost half the population of the Melbourne CBD that is home to almost 60,000 people.”
Moore said the City of Sydney’s local environment planning controls were “flexible” and “permit mixed-use development throughout the CBD”,saying the council had proposed incentives for Built-To-Rent projects.
“This is the second time in six months the premier has told the press that residential development is not allowed in the CBD,and as we have briefed him,that is simply not true. It is a worry that a premier in the midst of the largest changes to planning in a generation would not have the simplest facts at his disposal,” she said.
City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore accused Premier Chris Minns of having his facts wrong.Dion Georgopoulos
“In short,the premier has his facts wrong.”
On Thursday,Minns’ city-shaping housing reform was backed by the five mayors,who commended the premier on his commitment to tackling an issue decades in the making.
“We are in a crisis at the moment. We all have to do heavy lifting,not just[in] Western Sydney,but all of Sydney needs to do the heavy lifting. We’ve taken our fair share,but we know we need to do more. We can do more,” Penrith Labor mayor Todd Carney said.
The release of the government’s housing reforms in December led to significant criticism from some mayors,who accused the premier of failing to consult communities and destroying the fabric of household living,with one mayor claiming the policies would end backyard cricket.
As revealed last Friday,Moore,the long-serving independent lord mayor of Sydney,said the suite of reforms announced by the government was “the most significant in a generation” but were being rushed through without proper consideration.
“The proposed changes represent the biggest changes to the NSW Planning system in decades,yet the government is intent on rushing them through half-baked,” she said.
Moore said building more housing along transport corridors was key to tackling the housing crisis. But,she said,renewal projects such as Green Square had been successful because of careful planning.
“The solution to the housing crisis is not building unlivable and poorly designed neighbourhoods through a developer-driven,one-size-fits-all approach,” she said.
Business NSW chief executive Daniel Hunter,whose organisation is one of the founding members of the Housing Now alliance,said:“Housing has become an urgent economic necessity,whether it be in the city,the suburbs,or the region”.
