Greater Cities Commission scrapped as NSW promises more homes

The government’s intention to wind up the body and move all 350 staff from the Greater Cities Commission and Western Parkland City Authority to the Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) was announced in June 2023. This week, it will formally introduce legislation to dissolve the commission and transfer responsibility of home building goals to the DPE.

At the time, Premier Minns said the move would put the DPE in a better position to focus on the job of overhauling the planning process and cutting red tape. The state’s “valuable but limited resource” would be deployed to bolster planning delivery.

“There’s no point having housing targets if you can’t deliver the housing. This is about ensuring we have the right team in place to deliver the housing and infrastructure we so critically need in this state,” the Premier said.

With the change imminent, all eyes will now be on the DPE to eliminate some of the planning roadblocks that were responsible for processing, blowing up from 69 days on average in July 2021 to 116 days in March 2023.

The Real Estate Institute of NSW will be keeping score. The body said it agreed with the change in principle, but urged the government to get on with the task at hand.

“People in need of a home don’t much care whether the Greater Cities Commission, Department of Planning or whatever other bureaucratic authority is in charge of delivering more homes. They just want somewhere to live,” said REINSW CEO Tim McKibbin.

“If the same effort that has gone into the politics of housing supply was redirected to the actual building of more homes, the scale of the housing catastrophe wouldn’t be so great.

“On a weekly basis we are inundated with announcements of rezonings, revised targets and new responsible authorities. What we aren’t hearing about is the commencement of new projects. That’s because new housing feasibility is constrained by an environment of planning headaches, approval delays and tax hurdles,” Mr McKibbin said.

The NSW Productivity Commission has noted that NSW builds fewer homes compared to other states, and this is a direct cause for why housing in NSW costs more than it does anywhere else in Australia.

Premier Minns promised this change will expedite the building of homes, saying: “We’ve been upfront about the challenges we face. And overall this will mean more affordable housing, and more supply overall.”

The REINSW will be watching for the promised improvements, advocating for a “bricks over bureaucracy” approach once the legislation has been passed.

“Please, no more ‘roundtables’, ‘focus groups’ and ‘Parliamentary inquiries’. What we need is concrete, bricks, paint, wood and nails, and the appropriate support for the people and businesses who will actually solve the supply problem – developers and builders,” Mr McKibbin said.