On 4 September the Grand Hotel in Kiama was packed for an Independent Forum hosted by Kate Dezarnaulds, the independent candidate contesting the Kiama by-election on 13 September. To frame the discussion, Kate invited two sitting MPs, Alex Greenwich, Independent Member for Sydney, and Judy Hannan, Independent Member for Wollondilly, along with former South Coast MP John Hatton AO. Together, they brought the past, present and future of independence in NSW politics to the table. The night was about showing how independents can shape politics differently, closer to community and outside the party machine.
“It’s not a housing crisis, it’s an affordability crisis.”
That line cut straight through the noise. It was not a talking point, it was lived reality, and it landed in a room full of people who know exactly how deep the problem runs on the South Coast.
Speaker after speaker circled back to the same truth: the problem is not simply the number of houses, it is whether people can afford to live in them.
Alex Greenwich was blunt.
Short term rentals are swallowing up affordable stock. Nurses, teachers, hospitality staff, even a homelessness caseworker he had met, are being forced out of the towns they serve because they cannot find anywhere to rent. His solution was inclusionary zoning, where every new development must deliver social and community housing in perpetuity, not just fifteen year “affordable housing” deals that quietly expire.
Judy Hannan brought it home with local grit. In parts of her electorate, sewer is still being trucked out of new estates every day. Families have moved into houses without buses, schools or water infrastructure in place. Her message was clear: housing without services is not community.
It is government chasing stamp duty dollars while locals are left to live on construction sites.
Kate Dezarnaulds named what many in the room felt but rarely hear said aloud:
“The market will not deliver social housing because there is no profit in it.”
The major parties, she argued, have lost the courage to invest in vulnerable people, one side clinging to market ideology, the other afraid of looking anti business. That has left a vacuum where independents can speak the truth plainly. We need government backed social housing again, at scale.
And the audience pressed the panel further. Kiama local Mark Bryant asked why young families are still hit with crippling stamp duty, locked out of ownership once land prices pass $575,000. His question cracked open a bigger conversation about how NSW funds itself. Alex called out the state’s addiction to stamp duty and pointed to alternatives such as Victoria’s levy on short term rentals, higher mining royalties, and fixing poker machine loopholes. Judy and Kate agreed that housing reform cannot happen without revenue reform.
By the end of the night, the story was clear. Housing is about more than bricks and mortar. It is about courage to fund social housing, integrity to tie development to infrastructure, and clarity to stop calling unaffordable rentals “affordable housing.”
The independents did not promise easy answers. What they offered was honesty.
We can build houses forever, but unless we change how we fund, plan and protect them, our kids still will not have anywhere to live.
Further reading
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