Tele’s take: A Long Bay we could get into

Long Bay jail’s prime coastal location at Malabar, once chosen for its convenience, now presents an opportunity to address the city’s pressing need for residential development. Here’s the Tele’s take.

Aerial view of Long Bay jail. Picture: Supplied

Sydney was a very different place back in 1909, the year Long Bay jail was opened.

For one thing, there were no housing shortages or construction delays due to excessive bureaucracy.

If more houses were needed, they were usually just built.

Meanwhile, the location of jails was dictated by the immediate availability of land and ease of access for jail employees.

Nobody was particularly fussed if a new jail took up a huge slab of prime coastal land. After all, there were plenty of other coastal areas available. Take your pick.

Long Bay jail. Picture: Jeremy Piper

But Sydney now has a pressing need for new housing and the constrictions that formerly required the location of Long Bay jail at otherwise-lovely Malabar no longer apply.

Which, when all things are considered, makes a very solid case for demolishing the old joint and putting thousands of residential properties there instead.

“For the life of me I don’t understand why we’ve still got Long Bay jail,” former NSW police and transport minister David Elliott, now chief executive of the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia, told The Daily Telegraph.

The ‘Long Bay Housing Estate’ by Warren Brown

“You could sell that and build a new state-of-the-art, fit-for-purpose correctional facility in the outer suburbs or regional NSW where you’d get so much more bang for buck.

“The Long Bay site, once developed, would then provide a magnificent place to live for people who work in the city.”

Historic photo of Long Bay jail. Picture: Supplied

This idea makes even more sense in 2025 than it did in 2016, when Elliott proposed a Long Bay demolition as part of a plan to ease prison overcrowding.

The overcrowding is now happening on the outside.

One possible barrier to this eminently rational proposal is that Long Bay jail is listed on the NSW State Heritage Register.

The 116-year-old facility, according to the register, “is of considerable significance … it is an important development in Australian penal design”.

To which we say, so what? It’s just an old jail. Knock it down and put up some nice houses.

Problem solved. Now do it.
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