Latest news with #HousingDeliveryAuthority
Sydney Morning Herald
23-06-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ten-fold increase in NSW relief spending after horror run of natural disasters
NSW faces unprecedented spending pressures as a result of worsening natural disasters, its budget hit with a 10-fold increase to relief and recovery payments since the deadly Black Summer bushfires ravaged the state six years ago. In partnership with the Commonwealth, the NSW government has spent $9.5 billion on disaster relief and recovery across the state in the period following the devastating summer fires of 2019. This represents a 10-fold increase compared with the previous six years. Before 2019, expenditure averaged $154 million a year. After Black Summer, that has risen to $1.6 billion annually. The significant increase will be outlined in NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey's third budget on Tuesday, which despite spending pressures will report a stabilisation of the state's debt, delivering a gross debt improvement of $9.4 billion. The $188.2 billion of gross debt projected in the 2023 pre-election budget update is set to be $178.8 billion by June 2026, cutting the government's interest payments by $400 million in 2025-26. Mookhey will deliver his budget on the back of two years of the state's slowest economic growth in three decades, elevated interest rates and cost-of-living pressures. Mookhey insists he is 'optimistic' about the state's finances and says NSW was able to spend more on improving educational outcomes, as well as investing in hospitals and preventive care to ease the burden on the under-pressure public health system. Housing will be a key feature of the budget, but the government will also announce establishment of a new Investment Delivery Authority, modelled on the Housing Delivery Authority and designed to accelerate approvals for major projects across all industries, including advanced technologies and energy.
The Age
23-06-2025
- Business
- The Age
Ten-fold increase in NSW relief spending after horror run of natural disasters
NSW faces unprecedented spending pressures as a result of worsening natural disasters, its budget hit with a 10-fold increase to relief and recovery payments since the deadly Black Summer bushfires ravaged the state six years ago. In partnership with the Commonwealth, the NSW government has spent $9.5 billion on disaster relief and recovery across the state in the period following the devastating summer fires of 2019. This represents a 10-fold increase compared with the previous six years. Before 2019, expenditure averaged $154 million a year. After Black Summer, that has risen to $1.6 billion annually. The significant increase will be outlined in NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey's third budget on Tuesday, which despite spending pressures will report a stabilisation of the state's debt, delivering a gross debt improvement of $9.4 billion. The $188.2 billion of gross debt projected in the 2023 pre-election budget update is set to be $178.8 billion by June 2026, cutting the government's interest payments by $400 million in 2025-26. Mookhey will deliver his budget on the back of two years of the state's slowest economic growth in three decades, elevated interest rates and cost-of-living pressures. Mookhey insists he is 'optimistic' about the state's finances and says NSW was able to spend more on improving educational outcomes, as well as investing in hospitals and preventive care to ease the burden on the under-pressure public health system. Housing will be a key feature of the budget, but the government will also announce establishment of a new Investment Delivery Authority, modelled on the Housing Delivery Authority and designed to accelerate approvals for major projects across all industries, including advanced technologies and energy.
The Age
28-05-2025
- Politics
- The Age
Momentum builds to overhaul major housing handbrake
A bipartisan bid to reform the state's controversial Environmental Protection and Assessment Act is gaining momentum, with NSW Premier Chris Minns hoping to push the changes through within months even as Liberals are wary of a political ambush. The reforms, which could be introduced to parliament as early as the August sitting, would enshrine the transport-oriented development zones and the Housing Delivery Authority, help address the housing crisis, and come after the government's audacious Rosehill Racecourse proposal was shot down by Australian Turf Club members. Planning Minister Paul Scully and Liberal counterpart Scott Farlow have been meeting since the premier signalled in January he was open to bipartisan reform of the 46-year-old, 327-page EP&A act. The act has been criticised by developers, governments and councils for being overly complex, allowing anti-development councils to undermine housing supply while creating a field day for consultants. Senior Liberal sources privy to discussions said changes to the Complying Development Certificates process, allowing for low-impact development and code-based assessments, were under consideration. This would involve removing councils' ability to assess on subjective merit. Loading CDCs provide low-impact projects that meet a specific set of criteria to have simultaneous planning and construction approval. Under code-based assessments, proposals are assessed against a prescriptive set of rules rather than on merit. Other proposals under consideration included legislating the Housing Delivery Authority, the three-person committee to accelerate large-scale developments by bypassing councils, along with installing pro-housing objectives in the act, a move favoured by both sides. Urban Taskforce chief executive Tom Forrest has publicly backed the idea, and independent upper house MP Mark Latham proposed these amendments during earlier reforms of the act in March. While shot down, both Farlow and Labor indicated they would be supportive of the move later on.
Sydney Morning Herald
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Momentum builds to overhaul major housing handbrake
A bipartisan bid to reform the state's controversial Environmental Protection and Assessment Act is gaining momentum, with NSW Premier Chris Minns hoping to push the changes through within months even as Liberals are wary of a political ambush. The reforms, which could be introduced to parliament as early as the August sitting, would enshrine the transport-oriented development zones and the Housing Delivery Authority, help address the housing crisis, and come after the government's audacious Rosehill Racecourse proposal was shot down by Australian Turf Club members. Planning Minister Paul Scully and Liberal counterpart Scott Farlow have been meeting since the premier signalled in January he was open to bipartisan reform of the 46-year-old, 327-page EP&A act. The act has been criticised by developers, governments and councils for being overly complex, allowing anti-development councils to undermine housing supply while creating a field day for consultants. Senior Liberal sources privy to discussions said changes to the Complying Development Certificates process, allowing for low-impact development and code-based assessments, were under consideration. This would involve removing councils' ability to assess on subjective merit. Loading CDCs provide low-impact projects that meet a specific set of criteria to have simultaneous planning and construction approval. Under code-based assessments, proposals are assessed against a prescriptive set of rules rather than on merit. Other proposals under consideration included legislating the Housing Delivery Authority, the three-person committee to accelerate large-scale developments by bypassing councils, along with installing pro-housing objectives in the act, a move favoured by both sides. Urban Taskforce chief executive Tom Forrest has publicly backed the idea, and independent upper house MP Mark Latham proposed these amendments during earlier reforms of the act in March. While shot down, both Farlow and Labor indicated they would be supportive of the move later on.
Sydney Morning Herald
28-05-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Rosehill rejection: Why did ATC members look a gift horse in the mouth?
Not since 100-to-1 outsider Prince of Penzance defied the odds to win the 2015 Melbourne Cup has a result so deeply confounded established racing logic. The rejection by members of the Australian Turf Club of a $5 billion proposal to sell Rosehill Gardens Racecourse to the NSW government comes close. The prospect of 25,000 new homes on a site situated in the heart of Australia's fastest-growing region were stakes Premier Chris Minns had no option to mount. Under the National Housing Accord he has committed to delivering 377,000 new homes across NSW by 2029. Weigh up the racecourse's adjacency to a newly-constructed light rail network, a coming metro line and a surging jobs hub in Parramatta, and the odds looked impossible to ignore. The NSW government has made no secret of the centrality of housing supply to its agenda. From its establishment last year of the Housing Delivery Authority, through to its pursuit of its Transport Oriented Development initiative, its colours were clear and unambiguous. Recent measures by the premier to upscale the state's production of modular homes – and the contingent manufacturing jobs boost – only upped the stakes. As did the commitment from Peter V'landys, chief executive and board member of Racing NSW, to 'ensure the revenue derived from the [Rosehill] proposal is reinvested to benefit the racing industry as a whole'. Even these assurances couldn't get the proposal over the line. Nor did the prospect of around $2 billion in upgrades to other racetracks, or the sweetener of food, beverage and membership fee concessions. If I know punters' logic, the reason might lie in sentiment, rather than logic. Let me tell you why. Loading My grandpop, Harry, was a veteran of the 1945 New Guinea campaign. He would forlornly recall he was 'too tall' to be a jockey. Still, he remained a lifelong horseracing devotee. He lived in a fibro housing commission house in Granville, due to the state's last great housing shortage post-World War II. It was only five minutes from Rosehill racetrack, where he would periodically venture to, 'see a man about a dog'. Normally unassuming, Harry would harshly shush all of us grandkids when the races came on his 'transistor'. Either that, or he'd send us to the corner shop to buy him a packet of Rothmans Extra Mild cigarettes. 'Get some lollies' with the change he would add. When I was older, I asked Harry in gambling parlance what the 'tells' were in backing a horse trackside. 'Form be damned', he would rail. 'If you see a horse in the mounting yard sweating too much on a chilly day, give it a miss', he advised. 'Ears up, ears up!' That was his favoured sign. An alert, edgy horse was a sure bet, pop assured me.
