Australia continues to struggle with pressures in the housing market and one of the reasons is artificial constraints placed by local councils via heritage and planning decisions. So how do these decisions play out in practice?
Inspired by a Tweet by @Dyllip, I decided to take a deeper look into the census crosstabs from 2011 to 2021. What this first graph shows is the compound annual growth rate (CAGR, or year-on-year growth) in residential dwelling stock for each metropolitan council in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. It looks across two periods: 2011-2016 and 2016-2021.
In all three cities, dwelling growth is the fastest in the exurban fringes where there are significant greenfield developments - see Camden, NSW; Wyndham and Melton, Victoria and Ipswich, Queensland.
Where the problem lies in Sydney is that the vast majority of housing growth is occuring around the Parramatta CBD, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of requiring multiple CBDs to cater for Sydney's population growth and service-provision.
Compare this to Melbourne, where the CBD itself is the fastest growing council area in the city, along with fairly rapid dwelling growth in inner-city councils such as Yarra, Maribyrnong and Merri-bek.
A different way to look at it is to flatten all the councils into single boxplots for each city (I've averaged the two figures here) - Sydney actually has a higher median dwelling growth of around 2% a year across all of its metropolitan councils, but with the vast majority of it occuring in the western suburbs.
When viewed on a map, this becomes even more prevalent: councils along Sydney's coast no longer have any real residential dwelling growth, whereas in Melbourne, low levels of dwelling growth only really occurs in the suburban fringe and in lower socioeconomic areas (Brimbank and Frankston).
Legend: Red - 0.00% to 0.99% CAGR Orange - 1.00% to 1.99% CAGR Yellow - 2.00% to 2.99% CAGR Green - 3.00%+ CAGR
So, back to the original question - which are the worst councils for housing supply on the East Coast? They are these following 12 councils (who noticeably have been run largely by Liberals and community independents, who have a similar streak to the current "teal" movement.)
| Council | City | Political Control (until 2021) | 10 Year CAGR |
| Woollahra | Sydney | Liberal | 0.26% |
| Mosman | Sydney | Serving Mosman | 0.39% |
| Hunter's Hill | Sydney | Liberal/Ind. | 0.45% |
| Waverley | Sydney | Liberal (2011) Labor (2012) Liberal (2013-2017) Labor/Greens (2018-2021) | 0.63% |
| Northern Beaches | Sydney | Liberal/Ind. (2011-2017) Your Northern Beaches (2017-2021) | 0.73% |
| Randwick | Sydney | Liberal/Greens (2011-2012) Liberal/Labor (2012-2017) Labor/Greens (2017-2021) | 0.76% |
| Banyule | Melbourne | Liberal/Labor (2011-2020) Labor/Greens/Ind. (2021) | 0.97% |
| Hobsons Bay | Melbourne | Independent (2011-2016) Ind./Greens (2016-2021) | 1.06% |
| Willoughby | Sydney | Liberal/Ind. (2011-2021) | 1.07% |
| Inner West | Sydney | Labor/Liberal/Ind. (2011-2021) | 1.09% |
| North Sydney | Sydney | Liberal/Ind. (2012-2021) | 1.12% |
| Boroondara | Melbourne | Liberal/Ind. (2011-2021) | 1.14% |
Until more focus and attention is put back onto local councils and how much control they have over planning, development and the densification of our cities - Australians, especially Sydneysiders are going to find it ever more impossible to live anywhere except the outer fringes of our cities.