Beaches metro, negative gearing crackdown: The surprising policies backed by NSW Young Libs
The gathering will consider 13 disparate policy motions, as far ranging as the 'proposed elimination of central banking' and the ability for the Reserve Bank to set interest rates, to constructing a 17-kilometre northern beaches metro link from Chatswood through Frenchs Forest to Brookvale.
The two-day AGM comes as the party is at a crossroads at both state and federal levels. Federal leader Sussan Ley has been tasked with rebuilding the party after May's election hammering, while internal squabbling has erupted among NSW Liberals 18 months out from the 2027 poll.
The policy statement to be moved by James Ardouin, a Woollahra councillor and consultant with EY, is aimed at addressing stagnant housing supply. He argues an outsized investment of the nation's wealth in residential property has sucked large amounts of capital away from industries that 'create real economic value'.
'We have failed as a country to nurture our future prosperity by encouraging speculative investing on the property market instead of backing our best talent and ideas,' hewill say.
Ardouin will say he does not seek to abolish negative gearing but limit the policy's application to 'no more than one property outside a person's principal place of residence'. The motion was likely to be passed but watered down with amendments, said senior Liberal sources unable to speak publicly because of internal party rules.
'I believe that this reform accomplishes what the initial genesis of negative gearing initially sought to achieve by encouraging investment in new dwellings, which will in turn improve housing affordability,' Ardouin will say.
There is no mechanism for Young Liberals' initiatives to be adopted by the party, and such policy motions often go nowhere. But as the Liberals seek to re-engage with Millennials and Gen Z voters, cultivating new policies to address the nation's housing crisis will be paramount.
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