Teal suburbs betrayed by Labor

Flat White I 16 June 2024 I The Spectator Australia

This is a serious topic that will impact most readers, if not now then in the future. Effectively, the NSW Labor government has taken planning permission off local councils so that it can steamroll high-density infrastructure into heritage-listed communities against the wishes of residents. These are building projects that would never be approved because they violate existing codes and protections.

377,000 new homes have to be built in Sydney over the next five years to accommodate federal migration intake. Labor has decided to screw the traditionally conservative north shore with 107,000 homes marked for ‘Eastern LGAs’.

Local mayors are attempting to push back, even threatening legal action, but by-and-large these councils are painfully Woke and intellectually conflicted. They offer support for mass migration and pledge to do their bit to tackle the housing crisis. All they have left after these concessions is the NIMBY argument. ‘But not here. We’re special. We couldn’t possibly…’

What good is a local council that cannot bark successfully at the state government? The Premier knows none of these domesticated mayors will bite.

NSW Labor, under the leadership of Chris Minns,?has made cold remarks?that betray little sympathy for the cultural heritage of Sydney or the character of its suburbs.

‘You can expect more of this across Sydney … we’ve made that decision. We just think the alternative is just intolerable.’

Labor intends to build over families as a way to bury its political problems, crushing the Australian dream and obliterating any value people have sunk into their homes. Why are hardworking people paying for the mistakes of Labor? Is it because Labor knows it can never buy their votes?

The Minns government is focusing its destruction on the greenest areas of Sydney while seeking ‘green spaces’ in other parts of the city. Why destroy the environmentally-friendly areas? Didn’t those communities spend over a hundred years doing exactly what the government says it wants – making cities sustainable??

Nah. Needs more concrete. Needs more Labor voters nestled in cheap high-rises. To hell with your quaint gardens and parks! Is that a sandstone facade? What great building rubble that would make for the Metro…

These communities, once bespoke and beautiful, are to be turned into high-density slums.

Australia was sustainable. We were growing gently and organically.

There is a lesson here for the environmentally-minded wealthy seats on the leafy north shore of Sydney who thought they were guaranteeing ‘greenness’ when they voted for the Teals.

They thought they could keep living in large houses, on green streets, enjoying quiet communities, with low crimes rates, and plenty of room to park their ecars if they agreed to pay a little extra tax and put a few solar panels on the roof. They subscribed to the ‘kindness’ of endless migration because it made them feel better about being rich and never imagined that they would pay for the consequences with their homes.

Under the NSW Labor government, fan-girled by the Teals, these areas are facing an existential threat to their character. Before you mock and say, ‘Well, that’s karma!’ there are a lot of people in these areas who made no such mistake. More to the point, we should never be so short-sighted and petty as to give up our history for the sake of vengeance. If we sit back and laugh, we’ll still have to live in the concrete jungle left behind.

This is what some of the mayors had to say.

Northern Beaches Mayor, Sue Heins, said:?

‘We want to be part of the solution to Sydney’s housing crisis, but unplanned development of this scale will lead to greater congestion on local roads, put pressure on community infrastructure and overload the very limited public transport options available on the Northern Beaches. The proposals do not require the provision of any new affordable housing units. In some areas, it will change the local character of our neighbourhoods, reduce tree canopy and threaten local heritage.’

Hills Shire Mayor, Peter Gangemi, said,

‘This housing crisis is not caused by councils, it’s not caused by a lack of approvals, it’s not caused by a lack of zonings. You cannot zone your way out of this crisis. You cannot approve your way out of your crisis.’

Ryde City Council?Mayor, Sarkis Yedelian, said it would be...

‘...devastating’ for the local area. ‘Macquarie Park was set up for employment and for high-tech businesses. We want to encourage multinationals, not residential homes.’

Ku-ring-gai Mayor, Sam Ngai, said:

‘If Ku-ring-gai was allowed to plan for the long term, we may be able to protect heritage and tree canopy in some places, while delivering density in other areas that improves the financial viability and timing of housing delivery.’

The North Sydney Mayor has at least announced their intention to sue the state government.

This area is a good example of how this policy is going to cause chaos. Minns is super-imposing state dictates on things like building height restrictions which have established property values around sought-after views. Properties overlooking Sydney Harbour were purchased with local government guarantees that no one would out-build an existing residence. And that’s fair enough if someone is going to pour their life savings into something or take on vast amounts of debt for the investment. Our society runs on the idea that there are rules in this game and they are stable and fair. Now, to fix Labor’s migration problem, a developer can erect a high-rise in front of other people and destroy the value of their property. This is how you create hatred among residents and crash property values – which, come to think of it, is exactly what Labor is trying to do to wealthy areas in the city.

Teal voters, you were conned. Your MPs have no ability to stop Labor and its bulldozers. The lure of developer money and tax the government is set to collect from each new build is far more persuasive than your complaints.

It’s not only the look of the buildings that will change, it’s the value of homes, the strain on services, and the demographics of the people. In five years, the majority of voters won’t be upper-middle-class Teals, they’ll be working-class Labor. Those suburbs will never be conservative again and perhaps neither will the state.

Whether intentional or not, Labor is white-anting democracy by demolishing conservative suburbs and rebuilding them with newly arrived Labor voters.

So much for a Labor Party that cares about the ‘voice’ of the people.

Author: Flat White