Our community needs affordable housing, great parks and green spaces, and local shopping districts that are easy to get around without having to jump in a car. But time and time again the Minns Labor Government has propped up their developer mates at the expense of good planning for communities.

Minns' Labor Government attack on our community commenced with the so-called Transport Oriented Development scheme, proposing to introduce 14,000 new dwellings across Canterbury-Bankstown Council based on simply drawing circles on a map. This rezoning took a cookie cutter approach, rather than engaging in appropriate place based development, and putting the new homes we need in places where there is sufficient green space, infrastructure, and transport to accommodate the residents. Minns' Labor Government also failed to ensure important environmental protections, like electrification, and applied only an abysmal 2% affordable housing rate across most of the area. They have categorically rejected any provisions for greater environmental protection or increased affordable housing, and have not given our community the flexibility to transfer growth between suburbs.

At the same time, they have begun partially privatising the Riverwood Public Housing estate, and sold off local public land like on Trevenar Street, adjacent to Peace Park in Ashbury, to private interests.

Their developer-led push has also seen the creation of the Housing Development Authority that strips development considerations away from local communities. Developments approved through the authority also limit Council's ability to collect developer contribution funds to fund infrastructure. Instead, any funds collected sit in a State Government pot that can be allocated to anywhere in metropolitan Sydney. The 3 person panel of bureaucrats is not accountable to the community but to Minns himself. Currently sitting before this panel is a proposal to build a CBD-sized tower in residential Campsie. This tower would sit at 38 stories tall, and only include a miserly 5% affordable housing. As if that’s not bad enough, this tower would be developed by a company backed by Saudi Arabian and Emirati Oligarchs. Saudi Arabia scored just 1.6 out of 10 in the HRMI Rights Tracker for Empowerment (freedom of religion, expression and association) in 2024. Amnesty International lists Saudi Arabia as conducting the third highest number of executions, behind only China and Iran. Women are required to have male guardians, and protests and demonstrations are illegal. The United Arab Emirates is also complicit in the recent Humanitarian crisis in Sudan, and is in breach of modern human slavery standards, particularly towards migrant workers from South Asia.

It does not seem fair that our right to have a say in our community is being dispensed with by the Minns Labor Government, all for building projects that will benefit capital investors from countries with a poor record on human rights like Saudi Arabia.

Updated documents in the State Significant Development Gateway since this petition was produced now show the proposal sitting at 39 stories. The developer owns additional other properties within Canterbury Ward, and in their early stage proposals, they have requested density also exceeding 30 storeys. If this proposal is allowed to go ahead, who knows what scale they will request on these other sites, and the domino effect this could set off.

Say no to inappropriate development, and say yes to local residents having a say in their own community.