New South Wales has been promised 30,000 new homes including 8,400 public housing dwellings under what the treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, says is the state’s largest ever investment in housing.that it will make what it describes as an “unprecedented intervention in the housing market” by using surplus public land for 21,000 new homes and spending $5.1bn on public housing that will be built and managed by Homes NSW.
Stripped of what the treasurer says amounts to $11.9bn from the GST “rip-off”, the NSW budget will remain in deficit out to at least the 2027-28 financial year. Mookhey said had NSW maintained its recent GST share, the state would have returned to a modest surplus of $300m by next financial year. A decision by Revenue NSW in 2018 that GPs were eligible for payroll tax sparked successive court challenges from doctors, as well as warnings from the RACGP that more than 400 clinics would have to close if they were forced to pay their outstanding debts.
The government says it is also dealing with the “consequences of record public debt”, which reached $132.9bn or 17.1% of the state’s gross domestic product in June 2023. It says this is more than 500% higher than the level of debt NSW reached during the Global Financial Crisis in 2009-2010. It is relying on containing overall wage expenses by slashing the number of executive staff within the public service. The total amount of government spending is projected to grow just 1.7% a year in the four years to 2027-28, well below than the estimated annual inflation rate for Sydney of about 2.7%.