This video by the Save Mona Vale Group is essential viewing. It discloses the influence of the NSW Treasury and Property Council Members on NSW Planning, especially in Sydney.
It’s well worth the full 30-minute watch, to understand the connections.
What is often overlooked is the NSW Treasury’s fiscal booty from property taxation—Stamp Duty, Land Tax, GST and so on—is substantial. That booty is compounded when freehold land is subdivided into Strata lots as apartment buildings. Government fiscal interests connects with, and is in common with, the financial interest of Property Council Members. This has significant potential to corrupt NSW Planning.
It appears to us that NSW Planning is now overwhelmingly influenced by:
- NSW Treasury (represented by the Baird Government)
- Property Council (representing all major Property Developers)
- Greater Sydney Commission (associated with the Property Council)
This group, hereafter called “The Planning Club”, has already been described as “placing the Fox in the Hen house”.
Good participatory planning is supported and needed. Planning that involves local residents and reflects their community concerns, environments and opinions. Planning precincts that give convenient access to the rail network. Planning that protects Sydney’s suburban high housing standards: the ‘family home’ on freehold land in established suburban areas.
This should not be targeted by The Planning Club.
The Property Club’s influence on planning is a concern because The Property Council has long salivated over getting access to freehold land in established areas—areas currently occupied by ‘family homes’.
The Baird Government’s strategy to abolish existing democratically-elected local councils without a mandate, then refuse residents a plebiscite was to weaken local involvement in Planning by diminishing local residents’ participation and representation. A stratagem that has also been high on the Property Council’s wish list.
This video indicates the Greater Sydney Commission has connections with The Property Council. Ominous since the Greater Sydney Commission is already displaying regional plans now that existing councils (such as Woollahra—Waverley—Randwick) have been removed.
Will other areas share the fate of the old South Sydney Council area which disappeared and was reinstated only to disappear again along with its industry on freehold land? Land deliberately made redundant by the State Land Tax stratagem. Now it’s an area of massively high-density housing standing cheek by jowl.