This mayor says he’s ‘more YIMBY than NIMBY’, but his council will sue the state over housing

Planning Minister Paul Scully has lashed a Sydney council over plans to sue the state government over its housing policy, accusing the council of wasting ratepayers’ money to stop housing.

Councillors in Ku-ring-gai, on Sydney’s north shore, voted unanimously on Wednesday night to commence legal proceedings over the government’s Transport Oriented Development (TOD) Program, which will see four town centres in its region – Gordon, Killara, Lindfield and Roseville – significantly upzoned to allow apartments up to six storeys high within 400 metres of train stations.

Sam Ngai, mayor of Ku-ring-gai Council, said his council has been trying to work with the state government.Credit: Jessica Hromas

The council will seek “declarations as to invalidity and orders restraining any associated breach of law, including the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act” in the Land and Environment Court.

Scully blasted the council – which he has previously accused of being the only one in Sydney to refuse to work with the government on its housing reforms – for the decision, accusing it of “wasting ratepayers’ money to try and stop housing in the middle of a housing crisis”.

“How many services will need to be sacrificed to use ratepayers money to run an expensive legal case?” he asked.

But Ku-ring-gai’s Liberal mayor Sam Ngai said the Labor state government had ignored his council’s concerns about infrastructure and green space. The LGA has the single-highest tree cover in Sydney, accounting for 43.8 per cent of its area - but Ngai said open space was not evenly spaced.

“If you look at the Roseville TOD precinct, for example, there’s only one park in the entire area, and that’s a small war memorial garden. So if you build 5000 new dwellings and say, ‘Hey kids, look, you don’t have a backyard, but we want you to play somewhere, so go to the small war memorial garden across the highway,’ that doesn’t really work.”

He said other infrastructure concerns – including schools and transport infrastructure – could be upgraded later, but open spaces were different: “If we don’t act on it right now, then the site gets developed, and there wouldn’t be open space for residents.”

Almost all of the four TOD zones fall into the Killara High School catchment, a school that is currently operating above its capacity.

Despite the protestations, Ngai said he was “probably more of a YIMBY than a NIMBY”.

“If you asked me seven years ago before I became a councillor, ‘Do you support six storeys everywhere?’ I would have said, ‘Yeah, sure’. But after becoming a councillor and being familiar with the importance of infrastructure and heritage, it’s more of a refined position. I think you can’t just charge ahead without proper planning and funding.”

At Wednesday’s meeting, where councillors asked staff to begin studies to explore “better resident outcomes” for housing, Liberal Simon Lennon lamented the “destruction of the city and other parts of NSW”.

“And we destroy more parts of Sydney with the SEPP (State Environmental Planning Policy),” he said. “The state government can destroy them with the SEPP, and that will alleviate issues for this year, but then there’s next year, so what happens?

“The state government [will have] destroyed Gordon and Killara, and then in a couple of years’ time, destroys Wahroonga and Turramarra, Asquith, Putney. When does it end? Ponzi schemes are unsustainable.”

In his mayoral minute, Ngai said Scully had refused to provide an extension for the program’s implementation like he had for other councils. But in a statement, Scully said he hadn’t allowed it because the council “did not offer an alternative plan for housing”.

“The SEPP remains in place until the council can develop housing plans that deliver greater or equal housing numbers than would be delivered by the original TOD SEPP,” Scully said.

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