New South Wales Liberal frontbench senator Andrew Bragg has accused some of his party colleagues of “playing footsies with nimbys” for blocking real estate developments in Sydney’s suburbs that he says would help ease the housing crisis.”
The shadow assistant minister for home ownership told Guardian Australia that some Liberals were encouraging a not-in-my-back yard attitude to expanding housing stock in some metropolitan areas and obstructing measures that could help increase supply.
“The nimbyism is poison,” Bragg told the Australian Politics podcast. “I’ve been very critical, in some ways, of some of my colleagues, because I think the Liberal party has to be a party of supply and development, because that’s the only way I think you can solve the problem. So you need to find a way to build houses.”
“At times, I’ve been concerned that some of the NSW colleagues may have been playing footsies with nimbys, and I don’t think it’s healthy,” he said. “We’ve got to be very careful we don’t do that, because if you don’t build the houses, you won’t be able to solve the supply problem. If you don’t solve the supply problem, then the problem gets worse and worse and worse.”
Bragg praised the work of the Yes In My Back Yard movement in advocating for more housing construction. He said the idea that new real estate developments were required in established suburbs did not sit well with some Liberals.
“For a lot of the older people, they might find that quite shocking that we need to develop in ways that perhaps they wouldn’t like,” he said. “But this is the only way you’re going to solve the problem.”
Bragg said retirees with time to prepare submissions and lobby local councils were influencing the outcomes while others who were working, time-poor, and hardest hit by the soaring cost of real estate prices were being disadvantaged.
“They are the people that are going to pay the price of the failure to develop and to build,” he said. “So particularly when an apartment block proposals are knocked off, that’s very detrimental to our housing problem.”
He suggested some obstruction could be for “personal reasons”.
Bragg said other factors also contribute to the housing problem, including the controversial union, the CFMEU – now placed into administration – which has been accused of having links to organised crime and engaging in activities that may have pushed up the cost of construction.
Andrew Bragg also canvassed the NSW Liberal party’s “serious and massive operational failure” in missing the deadline to lodge candidate nominations for next month’s local government elections, leaving almost 140 Liberals unable to contest.
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“This is a very serious matter that’s happened, and it needs to be cleaned up in a surgical way,” he said. He backed party president Don Harwin who is facing calls for his removal after state director Richard Shields was sacked last week.
“I have confidence in Don Harwin and the executive to steady the ship,” Bragg said. He endorsed the appointment of former federal director of the Liberal party, Brian Loughnane, to undertake a “methodical” review of what occurred but declined to speculate on the likelihood or form of proposed federal intervention.
Bragg, a moderate, rejected suggestions the review process could be used by conservatives to nobble moderate influence in the party.
He acknowledged the absence of Liberals on local councils could have implications for the party’s upcoming federal campaign and its chances of regaining some seats, especially on Sydney’s northern beaches and the Central Coast.
“It doesn’t help. But I also don’t think it’s going to be the end of the world.”
