NSW Premier vows to make housing affordable with state budget

FINALLY, a government budget is seeking to address housing affordability. But some have called this Premier’s plan an ‘insult’ to first-home buyers.

PEOPLE'S PLAN IMAGES Rouse Hill residential developments - Sydney urban sprawl aerial photographs.

FINALLY, a government budget to address housing affordability.

NSW Premier Mike Baird has promised to help first-home buyers break into the property market by injecting $400 million into speeding up the delivery of more housing, which he says will put downward pressure on prices.

“Housing affordability requires many levers to tackle it,” the Premier said of the state budget measure yesterday.

“The principal lever that the state government can do is increase supply.”

But not all are happy.

Labor Opposition Leader Luke Foley has slammed the plan, calling it an “insult” to struggling first-home buyers.

The funds were a “drop in the ocean” compared with the almost $6 billion collected in stamp duty, Mr Foley said.

“To return a meagre six per cent of stamp duty taxes collected into housing affordability is an insult to first-home buyers across the state struggling to find a house,” he said.

Spending on roads infrastructure will also be boosted, with $1.7 billion earmarked for WestConnex, according to the Seven Network. The budget will commit the funds towards construction of a tunnel under Parramatta Road that will connect the M4 and Haberfield in Sydney’s inner west.

Mr Baird told the network that $700 million of those funds would be used for property acquisitions and other work before construction began next year.