Clover Moore’s NIMBY-esque rant shows she is out of step with the biggest issue facing Sydney

As the longest-serving lord mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore has outlasted seven prime ministers and nine premiers. The ABC’s chief election analyst Antony Green even told Good Weekend recently that Moore is “the most successful female politician in Australian history”.

Such longevity – Moore was recently elected to a historic sixth term – clearly points to a deep understanding of central Sydney and the people who live in it. On many issues her instincts and actions have been on point, if not ahead of the curve. But on the biggest topic confronting our city and state – the housing affordability crisis – Moore is out of step with the times.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore offers criticism but few solutions.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

In a speech to be delivered at Monday night’s council meeting, Moore blasts the state government’s new Housing Development Authority as a “step backwards” in attempts to solve the worsening housing crisis.

Premier Chris Minns established the HDA in November to fast-track new homes, allowing some major projects to bypass local councils. Why? Because he is rightly fed up with councils taking an absurdly long time to determine development applications.

Don’t believe us? Well, at least trust the statistics: Sydney last year registered its worst year for building approvals in more than a decade, with just 28,322 residential buildings approved – the lowest since 2011 and less than half the 58,000 approved in 2016 at the peak of last decade’s building boom.

Can anyone blame Minns for trying something new?

But Moore thinks she knows best. In her mayoral minute the lord mayor describes the HDA as a “panel of bureaucrats, not accountable to the community” and said the panel – made up of Planning Department secretary Kiersten Fishburn, Premier’s Department secretary Simon Draper and Infrastructure NSW chief executive Tom Gellibrand – lacked transparency.

However, the HDA’s fortnightly meetings are recorded, and full transcriptions and detailed meeting minutes are published online. If it recommends any projects to be processed as state-significant developments, the planning minister must give final approval, so the HDA is not actually making final decisions in a smoky back room as Moore suggests.

More than 6000 homes in 11 major developments have been sent on a fast route to construction under the first recommendations of the HDA.

The panel must, of course, make sure it makes decisions that do not risk undermining confidence in this new approach. But it has barely started and deserves to be in operation for a lot longer before the likes of Moore break out the usual NIMBY talking points.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Moore’s 2000-word rant is that it contains not one new bold suggestion for how councils and the state government can fix the housing crisis. Someone in Moore’s position has an obligation to propose solutions as well as offer criticism.

Other councils don’t like the panel. But it is a bit rich to whinge about new approaches when those new approaches have only materialised because councils have comprehensively failed to approve enough new housing.

The Herald shares Moore’s vision for a city with community at the heart of planning, design and construction. But surely the most fundamental community need is the capacity to buy or rent a home.

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