WHY wouldn’t the Urban Taskforce support the growth of Sydney as outlined in the Metropolitan Strategy? Whoda thought who would have instigated this growth?
THE UT reports that they believe the growth could be higher than the governments predictions, if immigration levels are maintained.
THE PONZI!
They acknowledge that they understand that the community (us) have concerns about the change of character that will flow from a move to a more urban environment. Substitute with the description of ‘high-rise and higher density’!
Apart from the ‘change of character’ what the turbo-charged GROWTH has meant when once it took 20 minutes to drive across a few suburbs it now takes 50 minutes! Commuters constantly sit at traffic lights. Our infants are being schooled in demountable classrooms and have nowhere to play … our buses, trains and hospitals are all full-up!
House prices escalated with the Howard Government in the late 1990s allowing Middle Class Chinese to invest in education and our real estate to gain ‘Flexible Citizenship’ … hence a property boom in the early 2000s.
And again with onshore proxy and foreign online buying (Juwai) between 2015 and 2017… continuing until the border closures …
Currently following these closures with interest rates low, First Home Buyer grants, many selling their apartments for the freedom of a house and garden … thus inflating demand … and house prices have again escalated like never before! Jumping $300,000 plus from December 2020 to January 2021!
Was the UT behind this too? To make houses unaffordable so they can offload more apartments which buyers had been resisting due to so many defective development reports. Cough … cough …
THE UT suggests that somehow the extra 770,000 new housing units will need to go somewhere ‘so we are demonstrating one approach towards this’!!
VIEW: https://www.urbantaskforce.com.au/urban-ideas-2/
With a return to high immigration the shortage and high prices for Australians will maintain!
NOTE in the UT’s “Urban Ideas: Migration Matters”, the Sponsors including major sponsor Meriton and sponsor Ceerose which have been major beneficiaries of high immigration … ‘Ol Harry’ (Mr Meriton) even went so far as to say this in a report in 2019 in the SMH!…
-China has more than 1 billion people, and they love Australia. I think they love Australia as much as we love Australia. So there will always be enough of them that will buy.
-My grandsons, they understand everything. The real thing is how do you make things happen. I teach them how to make things happen.
SCROLL down to find which companies have representatives on both the Executive and Steering Committees of the Urban Taskforce! Developers who, it appears, have had much influence on NSW INC … and constructed many Precincts across Sydney and housing developments across Sydney and its urban fringes …
Urban Taskforce Executive Committee at 2021
The Urban Taskforce Executive Committee is elected by the members and oversees corporate policy, governance and financial management of the Urban Taskforce Australia. It includes some of Australia’s leading property developers.
The Executive Committee DEVELOPER members are:
- KWC Capital Partners
- Rebel Property Group
- Multiplex
- Walker Corporation
Update on Walker Corporation:
In April 2021 from Save Sydney’s Koalas
‘This Walker Corp. concept plan in their Bushfire Report shows their proposed plan for the whole Appin area which will comprise 259 residential lots. With the removal of 25 hollow-bearing trees, the impact on the wildlife will be terrible. Not to mention the increased heat from the removal of trees and more heat-trapping asphalt and concrete’
Walker’s Parramatta Square project $3.5Bn is currently under development … but where there has been much controversy is in Sydney’s South West esp. around the rural village of Appin!
There Walker Corporation has very large landholdings in the midst of Australia’s chlamydia free Colony of Koalas!
And through developers like Walker Corporation, Country Garden, LendLease … much of Sydney’s former foodbowl has been lost to housing developments.
How has this come about?
View: Property Developers are among the biggest Political Donors in Australia, but should they be allowed to be?
These lobby groups have so much clout that no doubt because the Liberal Party has enjoyed so much $upport from the Property Council of Australia, the Urban Taskforce and others, what choice remained for the Labor Party?
View: Federal Parliament just weakened Political Donations Laws while you weren’t watching
https://theconversation.com/federal-parliament-just-weakened-political-donations-laws-while-you-werent-watching-149171
The NSW Government has determined the landholding in the South West District Plan as being suitable for urban release after 2036.
But this was not good enough for Lang Walker and submitted that earlier development was warranted!
Included is a letter to Sheridan Dudley South West District Commissioner Greater Sydney Commission
View:
walkercorporation-southwest_open_submission.pdf (gsc-public-1.s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com)
Despite the local councils’ refusal in September 2020, Planning Minister, Rob Stokes granted approval to rezone the rural landholdings for the Macquariedale Road Project now for 260 homes!
IF our governments had looked to the future health of our environment immigration levels would have been maintained at some 70,000 per annum not 300,000 or more annually!
Again property developer influence with the FIRB Ruling (2008/09) allowing developers to sell 100 per cent of new homes to foreign buyers …
Urban Taskforce Executive Committee at 2021 continued:
- Winten Property Group
- McDonald Industries
- Aqualand
- Meriton
- Holdmark Property Group
SOURCE: https://www.urbantaskforce.com.au/about-us/urban-taskforce-executive-committee/
Urban Taskforce Steering Committee at 2021
The Urban Taskforce Steering Committee focuses on public policy issues. The Steering Committee includes a mix of property developers and key experts in the areas of urban planning, law, construction and finance.
KWC Capital Partners
Peter Spira AM
Chairman, Urban Taskforce Australia
Tom Forrest
CEO, Urban Taskforce
Norton Rose Fulbright
Aqualand
Ironbrook Property Group
Rawson Communities
Avenor
- Woolworths Limited
- Multiplex
- Mills Oakley
- EG
- Cameron Brae
- Urbis
- Legacy Property
- HWL Ebsworth
- Crown Group
- Meriton
- Greenland Group
- Stockland
- Toga
- Allens
- Goodman
- Lendlease
- Payce
- Danias Holdings Pty Ltd
- Winten Property Group
- Combined Development Group
- Walker Corporation
- Mirvac
- CBRE
SOURCE: https://www.urbantaskforce.com.au/about-us/urban-taskforce-steering-committee/
COMMUNITY ACTION ALLIANCE FOR NSW (CAAN): HOUSING INEQUALITY WITH AUSSIES LOCKED OUT! 