It looks like yet another tale of two cities is emerging. This time, it’s about housing. Except strangely, the tale looks like it’s pulling closer into a single narrative.
In Sydney NSW Premier Chris Minns fronted an audience on Tuesday night of “like minded people” to ram home the message that he’s going to ram home housing for people, all over Sydney.
The headline in The Sydney Morning Herald was Premier declares war on NIMBYs”
It’s good news that he wants more housing, we hasten to add, not so good that he thinks open slather on zoning will achieve more affordable housing. (Only a mountain of urgently needed social housing will do that, Mr Minns.)
In Melbourne on the same night, a group of sedate and wizened folk bemoaned that the state government there had done just that – launched open slather on pretty much all of Melbourne – except with much bigger bulldozers and nary a concern for protecting Melbourne’s proud heritage of stately homes and buildings.
The blunt instrument the state had employed to allow its rezoning of higher densities 800 metres from a transport or commercial hubs was so blunt that the circles overlap each other, one of the speakers said. Nothing much of heritage value would be protected.
Michael Buxton of RMIT who’s written on this issue for The Fifth Estate called for co-ordinated campaigns to show that Melbourne’s heritage had its passionate defenders.
In the room there were no YIMBYs in sight. The danger is that the battle comes across as young versus older people. But as one speaker noted, the people who vigorously campaigned decades ago to preserve the beautiful heritage buildings most people “ooh and ahh” over now, were then young. It was the older folk who wanted progress and change.
Later one of the big wigs in the National Trust pointed out that young people were indeed still supporting heritage values and quite as passionate as they ever were.
But in Sydney the politics is highly sensitive and way touchier than Melbourne. The state government, say some observers, will simply bend to where the electoral wind blows.
The same goes for the federal government that’s now fallen for the same stories as has gripped the states.
But you really can’t blame the pollies. At the Melbourne meeting, there was a surprise takeover of the floor at the end by former Liberal Premier Ted Baillieu, who rocked our boat when he said that “when you talk to a politician, what you have to understand is that they haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.”
How true we thought. The campaigners for a deregulated world are highly organised, enormously well-resourced and very, very clever at influencing the public debate. Nearly as well as they manage to influence the pollies who are so busy they must struggle to be dressed and groomed for the day – and have our enormous respect for doing so!
These well organised lobbyists tell the pollies they have the solutions to the whining whingeing of the electorate. Right now it’s all about housing – so this push for no more rules and regs on housing or zoning, will provide affordable housing, right?
But it won’t. The only thing that can get built and pass the feasibility tests right now is luxury stuff.
The dereg/abundance agenda only looks like it’s about housing. In fact it’s all about the ideology – on corporate freedoms, AI, whatever. The pollies wouldn’t have a clue.
So here’s a thought: how about everyone who wants something different to what’s on offer, heed the call from Melbourne and start to tell the narrative that young people also love heritage and that older people also love low-cost housing for their children, anyone else who needs it?
Melbourne has managed to deliver both.
A tour through its inner north reveals any number of original shops, facades intact, but with shop top additions, gently set back, architecturally gorgeous and clearly increasing density without destroying the character of the place. You can see the residents love their suburbs because of the vibrancy that pops up everywhere, in unusual specialist shops, in casual conversations, and in areas where the residents festoon the streets with gardens on the footpaths and in the centre of the road, sometimes leaving convenient tables and chairs to sit and chat by.
That’s not just a narrative; it’s demonstrably possible. Eat cake, keep cake. Why not?
We can all do so much better.