In an electorate that screams privilege, an MP needs to pick a side on the housing crisis
As Sydney, and indeed the country, contends with a chronic shortage of homes, no NSW Liberal will feel this conundrum more acutely than Vaucluse MP Kellie Sloane. Overdevelopment, once the mainstay of local campaigning for both sides of politics, has morphed into the politically charged term NIMBYism. On the other side of the argument is YIMBYism, which is becoming synonymous with wanting to fix one of the greatest social problems of this generation.
Sloane, a moderate who is seen as a future leadership contender, has the seemingly impossible task of ensuring her party reflects the needs of modern Australia (which, as the federal election showed, the Liberals are failing to do) while representing the voters who put her into office.
Examining one of Sloane's biggest obstacles to assuming the leadership paints a good picture of how hard her task will be. A major impediment to securing the top job is not a lack of talent, nor party room support. Rather, it is the name of her seat.
No electorate in NSW screams privilege has much as hers. While it takes in areas including Bondi Beach and Edgecliff, Vaucluse – with its sprawling homes – is the antithesis of many other areas of the state, not least western Sydney. And the Liberals know this, so much so that there is talk that when the next boundary redistributions are drafted, the Liberals will lobby to have the seat renamed, perhaps back to Bondi (abolished in 1971) or even Waverley (axed in 1990).
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Seat name aside, Sloane, a former television journalist turned businesswoman, is keenly aware of the housing challenge she has to face in her seat. How she manages it is a different question.
At an eastern suburbs housing community forum last month, Sloane told the attendees that the Labor government's policy to build townhouses, terraces and six-storey apartment blocks within 400 metres of town centres was 'quite confronting'. Sloane singled out Rose Bay as being unfairly targeted, arguing the suburb lacked critical services such as a major supermarket or a train line.
Later, after her federal colleague Liberal housing spokesman Andrew Bragg took a veiled swipe at her stance, Sloane said she rejected being labelled a NIMBY. 'I am pro-development,' she said, 'it's a responsibility for every community, but I want a guarantee that it comes with investment in infrastructure.'
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