Rose Jackson wants to make one thing very clear as she begins her new role as New South Wales’ housing minister: medium- and high-density social housing developments should be built in Sydney’s north shore and eastern suburbs.
And if the residents there don’t embrace them? Too bad.
As she grapples with just how ambitious she plans to set her targets and the levers she can pull to achieve them, Jackson said she hopes to bring the communities, described by some as anti-development, with her.
“If they can’t get behind it, well, get out of the way because we desperately need it,” the minister said as she packed up her opposition office and prepared to move into her new ministerial digs on Wednesday.
“I’ve met the people on the waiting list so I am very motivated to just push through.
“I do want to bring people on that journey and say to them, ‘these are going to be buildings that you want in your neighbourhood, these are going to be neighbours that you want to live next door to’.”
Jackson, sworn in as the youngest minister in the first NSW cabinet with gender parity last week, insists public housing does not need to be ugly and can instead enhance an area by adding green space and amenities.
Her initial focus is on inner Sydney and regional areas, including the northern rivers that also falls into her remit as minister for the North Coast.
The problem Jackson has been tasked to fix in her new position is monumental and growing. About 52,000 people are on the social housing waitlist across the state, amid a broader housing and rental crisis.
The newly sworn-in premier, Chris Minns, has already ruled out freezing rents and is instead focused on promised reforms, including the creation of a rental commissioner and an end of no grounds evictions – which Jackson insists will feel materially different from the power imbalance renters experience at the moment.
By year’s end, she wants to see her party’s election promise to create a new agency – Homes NSW – setting ambitious targets for social housing construction and refurbishments.
“The way that I’ve tried to do politics so far is to shoot for the stars and if we get to the moon, great,” she said.
Jackson is not in charge of renting regulation, nor planning regulation, but will work closely with ministerial colleagues to take any and every action available, including setting targets for social and affordable housing in all new developments.
She cited a promise made in 2016 to have half of all new homes in London be “genuinely affordable”.
“Can we get it to 50%?” she said.
“I don’t know if in every development, particularly the ones that are already in train, whether that’s going to be feasible … but I’m going to try.”
The government has already committed to introducing a target of 30% for affordable and social housing on unused public land, but Guardian Australia understands the planning minister, Paul Scully, is open to other measures to boost housing supply.
Jackson believes the community is up for such nuanced policies and people are “way more switched on than politicians give them credit for”.
That’s part of her reasoning as she plans to keep using TikTok on her personal phone, despite the premier’s ban of the Chinese-owned social media app from all government devices.
“I have really tried to be someone who explains to people how the political process works and gives them an insight into what it’s like to be a politician and I really want to keep doing that,” she said.
“I use it as a platform to talk to people, young people about what it’s like to be in politics and why it’s important and continue to believe that’s really important.”
When she was sworn in as minister last week, she clutched a small acorn necklace that her mother, the late ABC journalist Liz Jackson, bought in her travels and wore for luck.
She isn’t religious, so holding something that reminded her of her “driven and determined” mother felt right.
“She would be very proud of me,” Jackson said, with tears in her eyes.
Jackson hopes to carry her mother’s assertive, uncompromising and inquisitive spirit with her into parliament where she will continue to wear her mother’s clothing and jewellery.
“I love wearing her clothes, I love wearing her jewellery and I don’t mind if that sounds a bit odd because I’m a bit odd,” she said. “That’s just one of the things that makes me feel powerful and like I could do my job.”
