Premier prepares to reveal ‘plan b’ housing strategy after ATC members torpedo $5 billion Rosehill sale
The NSW premier is preparing to reveal a new CBD housing strategy after ATC members torpedoed a $5bn plan to sell Rosehill to the state government, which would have created 25,000 new homes.
NSW
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Rosehill Gardens racecourse will not be sold after the majority of Australian Turf Club members today voted against the $5 billion deal, with 56.1 per cent voting “no”.
The decision was immediately condemned by Western Sydney leaders as a huge loss for Sydney, which will miss out on a new 25,000-home suburb that would have eased the housing crisis.
ATC chairman Peter McGauran’s last-ditch appeal to members to vote for the “once in a lifetime opportunity” to secure the future of racing in NSW for the next century failed to persuade the ATC members. In the wake of the “NO” vote, he said he would not stand down as chairman.
NSW Premier Chris Minns said he accepted the decision of ATC members, but described the result as a “golden opportunity that slipped through our fingers”.
‘I’m obviously disappointed by the decision of ATC members, I’m not going to lie. I think this would have been a great opportunity for Sydney, and the fact that it’s not going to be realised, is obviously disappointing,” he said.
“The truth of the matter is it feels like the closeness of the result makes it more difficult to take, not easier.”
Mr Minns ruled out a forcible acquisition of the racecourse, saying he would honour the result.
‘WE HAVE A PLAN B’
However, he confirmed the government had a “plan B” in the works to build homes elsewhere.
“We’ve got proposals that we’re getting ready to roll out for more housing closer to Sydney CBD. They’re not ready for me to announce today, and not everyone will love them, but they’re absolutely necessary for Sydney,” he said.
“I think this would have been good for racing and good for Sydney. I’m disappointed that it didn’t get up.
“But rather than throwing the car into reverse and saying, well, we can’t have big, bold ideas anymore, I think we’ve got to double down.”
Ahead of the vote, Mr Minns had warned there was “only one opportunity” to sell the racecourse land while there was still time to build a Metro station to service the new community.
“The train line and a station can only be built once,” he warned.
Without the Metro station the value of the racecourse is a fraction of the $5 billion on offer, with some estimates as low as $300 million.
The government started working on alternative plans to a Rosehill mini-city “several weeks ago,” Mr Minns said, anticipating ATC members would vote “no” almost a month before Tuesday’s vote.
‘IT’S FINISHED’: THE VOTE
The meeting was attended by around 750 ATC members including high-profile racing figures including Debbie Kepitis, the part owner of Winx, and vocal critic NSW MP Mark Latham.
The meeting heard a statement read from trainer Gai Waterhouse, who was overseas, who described the sale as “deeply wrong”.
Horse owner John Singleton left before the vote was counted but said he could tell the outcome from the sentiment in the room.
Mr Singleton said it was “a missed opportunity”. The ATC members voted by a slim majority against the sale.
“This is a missed opportunity for Sydney racing,” he said.
“There’s a lot of disappointed people here who were looking forward to making racing the future.
Too much past up there (in the meeting).”
Asked about the size of the membership turnout, Singleton quipped: “More than you’d see on a Saturday at Rosehill.”
Of the 11,500 members, a total of 7864 took part in the vote — around 60 per cent.
Of those, 3451 — or 56 per cent — voted yes, and 4413 — 44 per cent — voted no.
Mr McGauran said that meant the sale would not go ahead.
“The ATC members today voted not to sell Rosehill Gardens. That means it’s finished, taken off the table, will not proceed in any shape or form into the future,” he said.
“I personally am disappointed, as are 44 per cent of members who voted in support.”
Despite strongly backing the sale, Mr McGauran said he would not be standing down.
“It’s a relatively narrow result, but the members’ vote is supreme. It’s binding, and I respect it, and the club now has to look to the future,” Mr McGauran said.
Mr McGauran said the meeting had been extremely civil, and he reacted furiously to a post on X from independent MP Mark Latham that said he had been jeered in the meeting.
“That’s Mark Latham’s distortion. He lives in a reality world of his own making completely infected to suit his political objectives,” he said.
“Yes, there were strong points of view on a couple of occasions that there was a response from the audience, but it was minor.
“Mark Latham is a blight on the political landscape, let alone on the racing landscape.”
Mr McGauran said there were other options to replace funds lost to racing, such as selling Canterbury Racecourse or “piecemeal” parcels of land around Rosehill, but they would not come close to matching the “big change” that the $5 billion sale of Rosehill had offered.
“The funding would have transformed the entire Sydney racing scene for the next 199 years,” he said.
“I always saw it as both an opportunity to completely change and modernise in the face of declining attendance, declining membership, as well as necessity wagering downturn,” he said.
Had the sale gone ahead the ATC would have spent $800 million upgrading Warwick Farm racecourse to Group One status to replace Rosehill with a new grandstand, training tracks, stables and barns for 1000 racehorses.
Instead, members sided with a vocal Save Rosehill campaign that was backed by prominent trainers including Gai Waterhouse and Peter Snowden, who incorrectly said in a video to members that no firm figure had been put on the deal.
BUSINESS CALL FOR ‘URGENT RETHINK’
Industry and business leaders are refusing to give up on the dream of a Western Sydney development precinct they view as a game-changer and vital to the city’s prosperity.
Business Western Sydney executive director David Borger called for an urgent rethink from the Premier.
“This is the best site for precinct scale development in Australia,” he said.
“Compulsory acquisition occurs all the time where we need to build a road, or a train line, or a significant facility.
“A good example is in the middle of Parramatta. They compulsorily acquired an entire city block to build an underground Metro West station.”
Rick Graf, development director at Billbergia, a property company that has significant landholdings in the area, said another alternative was for the ATC to negotiate with government on a partial sale at Rosehill.
“They could retain the racetrack in the short term and start densifying around it,” he said. “Then in another decade you have high density and high towers wrapping around the course.
“That might be what government needs to pull the trigger on a Metro station, because without a Metro station you won’t get any significant development.”
Both agreed the closeness of the vote meant more work should be done to find a solution, or even mount a campaign for a second poll, despite McGauran’s insistence that the proposal was dead.
“It’s a tragedy for town planning in Sydney that this hollowed out doughnut hole is sitting there with not a single home on it,” said Graf. “The domain of nobody except a few very wealthy trainers.”
Borger added: “It breaks your heart to think that such a massive opportunity to get kids into the housing market, to create new supply to deal with the crisis we’re facing … could just sail by.”
MINNS’ ‘BIG ERROR’: SPEAKMAN
Opposition leader Mark Speakman accused premier Minns of making a “big error” in pursuing the sale.
“I am disappointed that 25,000 homes won’t be built at Rosehill, but I’m also disappointed that the government has spent 18 months pursuing something that was very unlikely to happen,” he said.
“We lost 18 months of developing a strategy out there with 10,000 new homes and we lost 18 months focusing on this mirage instead of getting to the bottom of the planning and housing problem.”
Mr Speakman claimed the ill-fated sale proved the government’s housing priorities were in the wrong place, saying they should have been trying to fix affordability instead.
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Originally published as Premier prepares to reveal ‘plan b’ housing strategy after ATC members torpedo $5 billion Rosehill sale
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