Inner City Housing Follies – Electorate Stacking Masquerading as Concern
Recently a Joint Regional Planning Panel (JRPP) rejected a 112-apartment development application in the inner Sydney area of Balmain. Nothing to note there in itself, it is an entirely normal outcome. But the response from councillors and activists reveals the core economic illiteracy, and long term social engineering at the heart of the ALP’s and Greens approach to urban planning close to our city centres. Said ALP Councillor Darcy Byrne:
none of the 112 units were allocated to affordable housing for key workers so the redevelopment was “all pain with no gain.”
Firstly, this reveals the economic lunacy of Cr Byrne’s class warfare agenda. High housing prices? Celebrate the removal of 112 units from supply because they aren’t designated ‘affordable’ and allocated to Cr Byrne’s preferred constituency. That reduced supply is at the heart of the affordability problem? Not on Cr Byrne’s radar.
That there is evidence good, locally-controlled planning can coincide with an expansion of housing supply, keeping prices stable with good local amenity in both Germany and Switzerland? Irrelevant to the ALP Left – the answer is forced subsidies and forced regulation.
The problem of affordable housing is strictly caused by government policy. It has nothing to do with developer decisions, gentrification or any of the class-based fear-mongering Cr Byrne enjoys. It is driven by planning controls that reduce supply in the inner and outer urban areas, and increase costs in both. Many of those drivers lie at the doorstep of the former ALP state government, and at the doorstep of local councils controlled either by Labor or the Greens. Cr Byrne’s Leichhardt Council is the poster boy for supply restrictions that increase prices [posts to follow].
Now Cr Byrne – who works for Left convener and powerbroker Anthony Albanese – has for years talked about more affordable housing and ‘key workers’ in inner urban areas. His mention of ‘key workers’ always refers to nurses, teachers, firefighters, ambos and similar, who have to travel long distances to work, frequently on odd rosters. He studiously ignores cleaners, convenience store workers, hospitality staff, late night retail workers and others who earn far less than his ‘key workers’, and who have exactly the same rostering and travel issues.
Why? Might it have something to do with the unionisation rates of his ‘key workers’? The formerly safe ALP state seats of Sydney, Balmain, Marrickville and Heffron, and the Federal seats of Sydney, Grayndler, Reid and Kingsford Smith are all changing rapidly. Both Green and Liberal votes are increasing.
As one of the few areas where Labor feels safe, that demographic change is very threatening, and threatening to the heartland of ALP staffers and union hacks.
But the real questions are: If Cr Byrne is truly concerned about looking after our ordinary workers, why does his affordability crusade focus on highly unionised groups that on average earn above the median wage? And why should PAs, retail workers, plumbers, apprentices and shopowners be excluded from the largesse he strong-arms out of developers wanting to build something within his council area? And above all else, why does he celebrate the one thing that makes affordability worse – the restriction of housing supply?
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It’s rare to see the housing affordability crisis in Sydney even discussed in class terms (which is strange, because it is ALL about class). But we have adopted all sorts of codes to avoid that “C word†now…
Jessica Irvine in this morning’s Herald spins the usual yarn, that it is all a generational thing. “Boomers†are the selfish wealthy, their children are the dispossesd, blah blah blah…
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/housing-outlook-remains-grim-for-the-forgotten-people-20120405-1wfd0.html
However she does make a similar point as you James, when (quoting someone) she mentions the “unholy alliance between environmentalists and wealthy homeowners who gain from higher house prices by restricting the supply of new housing.â€
Unholy is a generous description of Leichhardt Council’s strenuous and ongoing efforts on behalf of very, very rich. That most definitely doesn’t exclude your party, James.
As for Darcy Byrne’s not-so-neat piece of subterfuge, you are right to call him on it. But his position is all pretty irrelevant, more symptomatic of the ALP left’s total utter confusion about life in this century in general. Somehow imagining that a few “affordable†units on the waterfront in Birchgrove is going to “swing†the seat of Balmain back to its “roots†and avoid Labor being burnt to a crisp is a flight of fantasy worthy of Icarus.
The ALP’s more “sensible†position on all this is the grotesquely offensive one Bob Carr adopted on Sydney’s population, a variation of the Cronulla rioter’s “F—off, we’re full.†A lot of politicians, most not on the left, have found that works only too well.
@Gang: I agree, and this touches on the development over the last 30 years of a troubling political movement: the New Reactionaries, the New Aristocracy, or the Ruling Class, depending on whom you read. Leichhardt Council is currently in thrall to the New Reactionaries.
The reason it is troubling is that this movement has emerged on the Left. Those that most oppose change, most oppose reform to reduce prices and increase opportunity for ordinary people, and are most contemptuous of the values of ordinary people, are currently cloaking themselves in Leftist ‘good guy’ clothes. That is simply false. And the electorate has begun to see through it.
I often find myself taking positions and arguing for change in expressly old school Leftist terms, against the contemporary Left. On prosperity, on opportunity, on employment, on the right of people to make their own choices, on breaking down insider status. Our labels are all wrong, even reversed – they’re a remnant of another political era.
And yes, I agree that some Liberal representatives have argued for a Closed sign. Many Liberal voters have also signed on to Green myths about population, resources and housing. More fool them. It is true that that is an indictment of the quality of argument coming from our side of politics. But it is changing.
As for the ALP’s last ditch scrabble to save their dying model…well, it’s gone and it’s not coming back. But it doesn’t make Cr Byrne’s faux-crusade any easier to stomach, or any less damaging to the affordability debate.