Last year the NSW government suggested…

In August 2025, at an economic roundtable in Canberra, changes were sought to speed up supplying 1.2 million houses in the next five years, including cutting red tape; speeding up approvals by authorities; challenging the Environment Act (EPA) and holding off new requirements in the National Construction Code (NCC).

Immediately, the NSW government floated the idea for increased housing in low-rise towers at the unused Woollahra railway station as a perfect test case for its housing ambitions.

So, I responded in the SMH…

Woollahra Station ticks every box for good planning and urban design: housing located on a rail line is a perfect Transport Orientated Design (TOD) – the ideal of the Department of Planning’s new ‘Low and Medium Rise’ rules to increase housing density; the site is on a ridge, so good views from the towers, but view loss for others, an obsession for Woollahrites, is minimised; and the proposal is not unexpected – it’s been on the books for 45 years.

But wait, there’s more: plentiful walkable local amenities, and every retail and commercial desire is only one station away at Edgecliff or Bondi Junction, with playing fields, bowling clubs, Trumper Park and other play places within walking distance.

There’s design precedent at Edgecliff: a TOD that could have been so much better. In the mid-60s, the Anglican Church, the majority landowner in the area, engaged Clarke Gazzard, Sydney’s best architect/planners of the time, to design a series of ridge-based towers culminating in Edgecliff Centre (built before the railway line, with a giant basement for the future station).

In the end, only one well-designed tower was built (Goodwin Retirement Village), the remainder being poor-quality, market-driven apartments. There is much for Woollahra Station to learn here.

Preliminary designs show six- to eight-storey apartment buildings, often regarded as the sweet spot in creating sustainable amenity. Whatever size, they will face two high hurdles: state design regulations (Apartment Design Guide, or ADG) and the National Construction Code (or NCC), both of which are in productivity gurus’ sights.

The potential for a great outcome is there: the site immediately over the station runs north-south, so most apartments will have east views and west sunlight. The increased density at this hub would then encourage a re-appraisal of surrounding suburbia, where three-storey walk-up flats could replace single houses, giving a more condensed and affordable form of sustainable living.

All in all, Woollahra Station could become a pearl in a string of eastern suburb TOD stops and a shining example of the benefits forecast in the ‘productivity debate’.

This week the NSW government revived the idea…

But expanded to absurd levels, with high-rise towers throughout the entire suburb. Of course this will never happen: the procedural difficulties of buying private land and getting approval from a dissident council to build massive towers so close together are utterly ludicrous. Why publicise it?

Image: NSW government

This is what’s really happening…

It’s one giant redirection. The Minn's government has no effective policies whatsoever to increase housing. He knows he's in trouble with Albanese's idea for 1.2m homes in 5 years. He's falling way behind. He needs a distraction, a missing middle merkin. And this is perfect; it creates a commotion to disguise the failings.

It's got everything a smart politician wants, and it touts some trashy AI image.

An idea that sounds grand seems to address a problem, but for which they don’t have to do anything. It will fail, but on somebody else’s watch. All caress, no responsibility.

It enrages the opposition – it's on the home ground of the leader of the Liberal Party – whose loud protests will render them NIMBYs writ large.

It plays the class war perfectly: the West feels it's been asked to shoulder too much of the burden of new housing. This says, Let the toffs in the east suffer for a change.

And that mollifies electorates, plays on people's prejudices, and increases Labor’s standing without playing the envy card.

The Minn’s (and every state’s) government is proving inept in addressing the real housing issues. Greedy owners drive land prices high; construction costs rise; house values fall. A little political stink disguises how powerless governments are in that scenario.

Except in one area: government-sponsored housing. The government should intervene in the market to build social and affordable housing on its own land. We desperately need it, and now is the right time to do it.

Like every other state Premier in Australia, Minns loves a distracting AI CGI.

Cross-Sections are Friday musings from Tone Wheeler, formerly of Tone on Tuesday. Amateurs draw plans; professionals draw sections – never at cross purposes.

Tone Wheeler

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