Executive Director of the NSW Property Council, Jane Fitzgerald, penned a spurious article in The SMH yesterday spruiking government plans to force further development across Sydney’s suburbs [my emphasis]:
Sydney is growing just as it has always grown. To plan and make the best from this growth we need to give the Greater Sydney Commission the time to implement the recently finalised strategic plans for our city. The last thing we need is another public inquiry...
Sydney now has three strategic plans that are aligned; one for land, one for transport and one for infrastructure…
Although the strategic plans provide direction; the community will begin to see real change in their neighbourhood when the strategic plans of local councils, known as Local Environmental Plans, have been updated in accordance with the city-wide plans.
This is the next step for Sydney…
What won’t help our city or the community is changing horses now or having a debate about immigration. The Greater Sydney Commission has worked hard to engage with the community, collaborate and create consensus. Pulling our support – just at the point when implementation is set to begin – would be churlish and counter-productive.
That’s not to say that our city’s growth cannot be better managed. But let’s not forget that for NSW, growth is familiar. Growth provides workers to our labour force for those industries that need it, to contribute to economic growth and encourage further investment and also enrich our cultural landscape.
…to alleviate the pressure on the community we need considered reforms to our current planning, transport and infrastructure systems; we need better ways of doing things.
Recent reports from Infrastructure Australia, the Grattan Institute and the Reserve Bank all provide solutions to better managing growth that will help with solutions to the challenges we are experiencing…
We don’t need another inquiry to tell us what we already know.
This is planning propaganda 101 by the Property Council: push something undesirable as inevitable, then suggest solutions that line their own pocket.
Sadly, these so-called “solutions” to Sydney’s force-fed immigration will result in deteriorating living standards for incumbent residents. This was made explicit in Infrastructure Australia’s recent report, which showed that traffic congestion will unambiguously worsen and access to jobs, schools, hospitals and green space will all decline as Sydney’s population grows to 7.4 million people by 2046, irrespective of whether the city builds up like New York, sprawls-out like Los Angeles, or does a London-style combination:
Given running a mass immigration ‘Big Australia’ program is a direct policy choice, why would anybody in their right mind voluntarily choose a path that guarantees lower living standards for residents? Unless of course you are an industry rent seeker like the Property Council, which gets to privatisation the gains from population growth, while socialising the costs on ordinary residents.
It’s also worth pointing out that Jane Fitzgerald’s latest spruik directly contradicts her statement last month during Q&A’s ‘Big Australia’ special, whereby she called for infrastructure to be put in place first before population is increased:
TONY JONES
Can I just ask a question? Why do all the houses get built before the public transport is put in place?(LAUGHTER)
TONY JONES
It’s pretty obvious…JANE FITZGERALD
It’s a great question.It’s a great question.
TONY JONES
Should there be rules to stop that from happening?JANE FITZGERALD
Absolutely.TONY JONES
I mean, you’re with the property developers.JANE FITZGERALD
Absolutely. There should be rules.TONY JONES
You’re talking on their behalf. So, shouldn’t they just say, “We’re not going to build there until you put a rail line”?JANE FITZGERALD
It’s absolutely a no-brainer, and you’d think that we would have done it before now, but we haven’t done it that way in the past, and that’s all there is to it.
Clearly, Jane Fitzgerald went off script last month in making such a sensible statement, and has returned to being a paid shill for the ‘growth lobby’.
Thankfully, readers of The SMH are scathing of Fitzgerald’s views, penning the following Letters to the Editor:
I appreciate Jane Fitzgerald’s comments on how Sydney should grow (“Don’t shy away from a bigger Sydney”, April 9). What I don’t appreciate is the inference that this growth is inevitable. The population explosion in Sydney and Melbourne is a result of the government’s determination to increase the number of immigrants to rates that many observers have noted are unsustainable. The state governments are struggling to put the requisite infrastructure in place. Perversely the major political parties refuse to engage with Australian voters about this rush to a “big Australia”. Contrary to what Ms Fitzgerald states, we do need to debate about this issue. Politicians need to engage with communities, not developers, about the rising rates of migration and explicitly state what their policies are, that way, the Australian voting public can make its voice heard. The silence from Canberra on this topic is deafening. – Deborah Pelser, Killara
Fitzgerald makes it clear that the Property Council definitely does not want two things: a “debate about immigration” (population), and “another inquiry”. Well, we already knew that. What we don’t know, but suspect, is how much better and more liveable Sydney could be if the same planning expertise and infrastructure expenditure was directed at more manageable population targets. Without blind and endless “growth” we would have pleasant transport options, accessible playing fields and beaches, beautiful pockets of urban bushland, and fewer bitter and frustrated young people. – Norman Carter, Roseville Chase
Fitzgerald’s optimism about the future planning of Sydney must be based more on hope than evidence. We have had multiple plans since the original County of Cumberland Planning Scheme in the dim distant past, but none of them has led to an efficient people-friendly environmentally sustainable city, and there is no reason to suppose that the new plan will have an outcome any different from the one we are experiencing. As for local environmental plans showing the way to a new future, these are almost invariably backward-looking unimaginative pieces of bureaucratic stodge designed to protect the status quo and fiercely resistant to any innovation. Occasionally, a “courageous” minister will override some of the more egregious development obstacles in these documents, but it’s not something to be relied on. If we had a proactive Department of Planning, there might be some possibility of change, but the present somnolent organisation generates expectations only of more of the same. – Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy
Unfortunately the word “plan” is starting to send shivers down the spines of Sydneysiders. “Planning” means more chaos, costs, cranes and ever increasing traffic, noise and people. It also means dynamic and sudden change in the local environment – traffic snarls on the trip to the local shopping centre, inability to find a parking spot there, gross overdevelopment of suburban blocks featuring concrete and treeless spaces where once stood heritage bungalows and Queen Anne architecture. No amount of hype will convince some of us that a “Greater Sydney” is “just as it has always grown”. We need transparent and inclusive debate on this issue. – Vanessa Tennent, Oatley
The public sees the truth, but continues to be ignored by their so-called political representatives.
