19th February, 2025.
As all members know, the Housing Amendment Bill 2025 amends the Housing Act 2001 to allow the Minister for Housing to acquire, hold and deal with land and property according to the objective of the Housing Act to deliver secure, appropriate and affordable housing to all people in New South Wales. Specifically, the bill proposes to give the Minister for Housing the same functions as the Land and Housing Corporation. The suggestion that a second process be established to fulfil the functions of the Land and Housing Corporation shines a light on the current housing supply problem. I support the proposed amendments to the Housing Act but express my disappointment that such an amending bill is required. Clearly, adequate housing and infrastructure are not being delivered.
In creating a sideline process that mirrors what another government entity should already be doing, the proposed amendment shows the inadequacy of the current system. In my electorate of Wollondilly, the Government already owns 871 hectares of land through Landcom, which is a State owned corporation established under the Landcom Corporation Act 2001. Landcom has promised 5,600 new homes and two new schools in the Wilton area. However, those developments in infrastructure have not been delivered in a timely manner. In June 2023 Landcom claimed that new residents would be settling into the area by 2025, but so far the development has not progressed beyond the first stage of bulk earthworks and a few wooden poles.
Moreover, due to easily correctable errors in the calculations in Biosis's Cumberland Plain Conservation Plan: Functional Koala Corridors report, up to 800 potential house blocks in those potential developments were lost. Those errors will result in land not being developed to its full potential and have significant implications for housing supply. They will also place unnecessary restrictions on landowners outside the growth area at the junction of Wilton and Appin. In trusting to Landcom, a commercial business, the vital work of supplying houses to the people of New South Wales, the Government has failed to deliver the promised housing on time. Consequently, the Wilton area suffers from an unacceptable lack of infrastructure.
Wollondilly Shire Council has a projected population increase of 85,000 by 2041, yet currently there are only two public high schools in the entire electorate, which is covered by two local councils. Students are spending as long as two hours a day in transit. Nearly all of them must travel to high schools outside the area. I urge the Government to deliver the K-12 public school to the growing population of Wilton that has long been needed, in accordance with the Wilton Junction Master Plan and my submission to the 2025-26 budget. The amending bill proposes to open a new avenue for the Government to acquire land to deliver much-needed housing to the people of New South Wales, yet government-owned land in my electorate lies empty while my constituents suffer from an unacceptable lack of infrastructure. The Government should make use of the land it already owns to supply the infrastructure that the growing population of Wollondilly desperately needs.