The Urban Taskforce is deeply concerned about the increasing propensity for NSW Labor to resist policy detail by resorting to cheap shots. Undermining the entire property development sector is not sensible and will not win support nor votes.
Two days after the State Budget, the NSW Leader of the Opposition, Jodie McKay, should focus her efforts on developing policy to stimulate jobs and economic growth and resist taking cheap shots at the property development industry.
Labor’s refusal to address any policy on jobs or growth has alienated its traditional base. The Government has delivered an outstanding budget – and the NSW Opposition response is to re-heat a tired political stunt.
The western suburbs of Sydney used to be Labor’s heartland. During the Carr/Iemma years, Labor held every seat from Drummoyne west to Bathurst.
Jodie McKay has focussed her efforts on competing with the Greens – and she has comprehensively lost that battle. In the meantime, she throws cheap shots at the Government using the property construction and development sector as the lead in her shot-gun.
The Urban Taskforce has repeatedly called for a ban on income for services for all MPs. Not just from prohibited donors, but from everyone. Why has Jodie McKay not supported this?
Urban Taskforce agrees that all MPs should devout 100% of their time and effort to their constituents and their portfolio responsibilities.
Today’s call for a ban on “Property Developers from the Cabinet” is nothing but a cheap stunt.
What does this even mean? Under the rules that govern political donations, a “property developer” is anyone where:
- One relevant planning application has been made by or on behalf of the individual or corporation that is pending; or
- Three or more relevant planning applications have been made by or on behalf of the individual or corporation and determined within the preceding seven years.
Construction and Property Services is now the largest employment sector in Australia. Property Developers use their own money, or borrow from banks, to run the gauntlet of the planning system, co-ordinate builders, tradies, architects, engineers, landscape designers, and a myriad of professional consultants to deliver new homes, new apartments, new workplaces, new shopping centres and new communities.
The property development and construction sector employs almost 10% of the NSW workforce. When Jodie McKay makes indiscriminate attacks on all property developers, she is directly insulting some of the biggest private and listed companies and Super funds in Australia, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people they employ or engage as sub-contractors.
When Jodie McKay and her team attack apartments, they are attacking 70% of the new homes in Greater Sydney. Young couples and new families move into apartments. Why would any politician attack the choices of our best and brightest?
