Safe and small won him power, but Premier Chris Minns needs to go big and bold if he has any hope of solving the biggest issue facing NSW. From the start of his premiership, Minns has talked a big housing game and the success of this government will be measured against a very tangible set of key performance indicators: housing targets.

Minns’ long-awaited housing plan, released on Thursday after a few false starts including a bout of COVID for the premier, is being touted by the government as the most significant announcement it will make this term. After a shaky, and at times shambolic, start to its first year in power, the ambitious plan gives NSW hope that this may not be a small-target government, after all.

Build it and they will come. Build 75,000 homes a year and they will still keep coming. The Minns government has announced home building on an unprecedented scale. Credit:

Australia needs to build 1.2 million homes over the next five years. NSW must deliver 377,000 of them under the National Housing Accord. Minns likes to cite an unenviable set of facts: despite NSW being the most populous state with the largest expected increase in population and the highest rents and median house prices, his state is lagging well behind.

NSW builds six homes for every 1000 people each year, compared with eight in Victoria and nine in Queensland. Last year, NSW built just 48,000 homes, Victoria 59,000. The NSW Labor government needs to hit the accelerator if it has any chance of reaching the ambitious targets.

Its housing plan appears, at least on paper, to be a good start. At the heart of it is shifting Sydney’s second racecourse, Rosehill Gardens, to make way for a new western Sydney suburb with 25,000 homes. But planning changes are also necessary and the government will force councils across Sydney to abandon biases against medium and high density and lift longstanding bans on building terraces, townhouses and two-storey apartment blocks.

Land around eight Metro and heavy-use rail stations will be rezoned to make way for 47,800 new homes by 2027 and the government will impose new planning controls for 31 train stations in Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle, which will allow for more multi-storey developments.

Those stations are in areas such as Roseville and Lindfield on the north shore; Marrickville, Dulwich Hill and Canterbury in the inner west; Rockdale and Kogarah in the south; and St Marys, Lidcombe and Wiley Park in the west and south-west.

A glaring omission from that list is the eastern suburbs, which include Bondi Junction and Edgecliff stations. But this is the beginning, not the end, Minns says. “We’re not done yet,” he shot back when asked why the east was spared.