‘Progress became a dirty word’: Rob Stokes on fixing Sydney | DeborahSnow
Incoming MPs generally use inaugural speeches to deliver values statements and platitudes about legislative goals.
But Stokes, the NSW minister for Planning and Public Spaces and MP for Pittwater, is an unusual blend: a do-er, a fitness freak, but also, in the words of one long-time observer of Sydney’s planning scene, a “deep thinker”, a policy wonk and a scholar of sorts . “In 20 to 30 years the value of a house [in these areas] will potentially be diminished because they will be living in a hotbox in an environment where there could easily be five to six days a year at 50-degree temperatures.”
He says he’s sought to use his formidable ministerial powers under the planning act to put greater emphasis on bushland and parkland renewal alongside urban and community renewal and is seeking to put a “metropolitan rural zone” - an agricultural periphery - around Sydney to underpin “organic food and those sorts of things”.
Stokes outside his home on hisway to do some volunteer lifesaving work with a then broken foot in October. He had announced he would be putting his hand up to be premier.That includes the bedding down of nine new “minister’s Planning Principles” he unveiled a week ago. “God gave Moses the 10 commandments and I give the planning system Nine Commandments”, he declared at the launch, only half in jest.
Another example he points to is the development control plan for the town of Wilton, on Sydney’s south-west fringe, “where we said to home builders that you need to ensure there is sufficient space, deep soil, to plant a tree in the backyard of a detached house”. Developers were outraged, he says, complaining it would impact affordability.
What would he want to change? “At a very simple level let’s have a tax policy that encourages everyone to get“With negative gearing perhaps we could look at, if you are going to get a tax advantage, asking what’s the public benefit in that? Are you investing in social or affordable housing with a community housing provider for example? ... But if you’re using that to buy yourself a $10 million beach house maybe that’s something you don’t need a tax break that everyone else [pays] for.