Australia is in the middle of a housing affordability crisis.

I don’t know, have you noticed? That might be news to you. Perhaps you haven’t heard about it yet or I’m sure it’s been crossing your path as it has made headline news for literally years on end. Different people are trying to blame lots of different things and sure, there are things that have made it worse, but fundamentally it comes down to the fact that government is involved in housing. And someone who’s trying to get government just a little bit more out of the way is New South Wales MP John Ruddick, who’s recently had a very big win on a reform which sure, single-handedly isn’t going to end the housing crisis, but it is a pretty big step in the right direction.

We’re going to talk with him in just a moment, but first, my name is Topher Field. This is the Topher project and I help busy people like you to make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us in the world and to see what’s coming down the pipeline with stories and news and information that other people and especially the mainstream media don’t tend to talk about. So, thank you so much for watching. Without further ado, let’s get to John Ruddick MP. John, welcome to the Topher project.

[From interview] Nice to see you, Topher. Thanks for having me. [End interview]

You’ve just had a very big win in the New South Wales Parliament. You just said to me off air before we started recording that that feels quite strange as a libertarian sometimes to get enthusiastic and unanimous support. Tell us what is this proposal? What is this idea that you’ve had that has actually been met with support and unanimous enthusiastic support from the New South Wales Parliament?

[From interview]
Well, in summary, what we’re saying is there’s 250,000 properties in New South Wales that are classified as rural residential. Now, often they are very big farms. They might be a hobby farm, but they’re over five acres. [End interview]

I’m sorry to interrupt this interview with John Ruddick, MP. One of the things I love doing here at the Topher project is bringing you good news stories about the people who are trying to make a positive difference. The world is not all doom and gloom. Sometimes it can feel that way. I completely understand. But the truth is there are amazing people out there doing amazing things. And I love bringing you stories like this. You can help me to keep the Topher project going by heading over to topherfield.net and buying me a coffee via the button that you’ll find there, and also by going to goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. That’s this URL over here and checking out my books about civil disobedience.

These are bestselling books that combine history and theology in the case of my second book, Good Christians Break Bad Laws, as well as political philosophy and my own personal experiences being on the front line of the push back against all the COVID restrictions in Melbourne. You’ll find those at my website, Good People Break Bad Laws. You’ll also find my DVD, Battleground Melbourne. Now, you can buy this on DVD or you can actually watch it completely for free at battlegroundmelbourne.com. I had the privilege of telling this story, but as I’ve said right from the start, I don’t consider this to be mine. This belongs to the people of Victoria and the people of Melbourne who wrote this story, this incredible story of their courage as we all got together and pushed back against Daniel Andrews and all of his lockdowns and the police violence, etc.

So, if you want to support my work, please buy one from goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com so you’ll have this to put on your shelf. But if you just want to watch it and see what happened to us, then you can go to battlegroundmelbourne.com and you’ll be able to find it there. There’s also a full range of merch in different designs in t-shirts, long sleeve t-shirts, and hoodies. And everything you buy goes towards helping me to continue to bring you news and stories like this one. A bit of good news about some planning reforms thanks to John Ruddick, MP.

[From interview]

Now, the rules at the moment are basically saying, look, you can have one dwelling on there. Now, there can be some exceptions. They can say, “Look, you can build a house.” Get this there’s some differences with some council areas, but the general rule for New South Wales is you can build a second house if it’s exactly one-third the size of the primary house or exactly three times the size of the primary house. Okay. And they have all these… Okay. So now what we’re saying is and then they’ve got to go through all these planning approvals from the local council which is difficult and time-consuming and costly and often they say no. So what we’re saying is that if you own rural property more than 5 acres, you can build a second residence. You don’t need to get the approval from the local council.
Now, what’s this going to do? Well, it’s going to give us a lot of homes. Obviously, not everyone’s going to want to build a second property, but a lot will. It means that you’ve got young kids, you want to keep them around the farm, they can go and live there. Grandma and grandpa can go and live there. Seasonal workers can go and live there. Airbnb tourists can go and live there. The value of the property is going to go up. They might be getting a little bit of rental income as well. So, it’s win-win. And best part of all, Topher, which makes it very libertarian it’s not going to cost the government a cent.
Now, we have had a win in setting up a select inquiry, which I’ll be chairing. We’re going to be going around the state. There is a lot of nitty-gritty detail. So what was unanimous last night and as you said, very enthusiastic support from across the political spectrum that we say yes, we created this inquiry. Now we haven’t turned it into legislation yet. This will take time, but so far it’s looking like it’s definitely heading in the right direction. [End interview]

Well, I absolutely love this for so many reasons. As a libertarian, yes, the fact that what all we’re doing is reducing the level of restriction in how people use their privately owned land. I’m all for that. But in particular, I mean, I live now out in regional New South Wales, and I know a lot of people who live on the land farmers, etc. They’re doing it quite tough for lots of different reasons. And off-farm income has become a really crucial thing for a lot of farmers in order to survive. One or other, the husband or the wife on these family farms often has to go and earn a living elsewhere in order to supplement the farm. Doing something like this, allowing, like you said, rental income potentially for workers to be able to stay in or indeed for Airbnb’s for farmers to be able to run hospitality-type businesses I think this is an excellent, excellent reform. But more than that as well, it’s going to help to bring a construction boom to non-urban areas where builders potentially aren’t as busy as what they are in places like Sydney and Melbourne. Builders are already pretty flat out, but you go to places in regional areas and that isn’t always the case. So, I think this is a fantastic reform.

Now, you’ve said that there’s a lot of nitty-gritty, there’s a lot of detail there. I want to draw everyone’s attention to an explainer a reform explainer that you have put together and sent through to me. I’ve read this from start to finish. We’re not going to go through it from start to finish, but I think it helps people to understand the journey and the amount of work that goes in, because it’s one thing to have a thought bubble: “Hey, let’s let people build a second dwelling on properties over 5 acres with the correct zoning.” It’s another thing altogether to actually make that take effect in legislation. What’s the process you’ve had to go through here?

[From interview]

Well, look, you might remember 12 months ago we had quite a few libertarian councilors elected across New South Wales, and one of them was Councilor Mark Hornshaw from the Port Macquarie-Hastings region, and he’s a landowner. And he brought it to our attention about 3 months ago that he wanted to he’s got four or five young kids, some of them getting married and so he wanted them to, you know, live with him, you know, have their own property.
And he just said, “Look, it’s unbelievably complicated and, you know, they’ve got all these rules and regulations and no one knows why these rules and regulations are there. They’ve just sort of built up over time and it’s local government stuff, state government stuff, all this red tape and green tape,” okay? “And it just makes it basically impossible in too many cases.” And so we got talking with Councilor Hornshaw, and then there’s another guy who’s not officially a libertarian, but he’s fairly libertarian-minded. He’s a very good councilor at the Hawkesbury City Council, Nathan Zano. And we had a series of meetings with them.
We then went to the planning minister the Labor planning minister who is our favorite minister in the government because he is pro-development, pro-property rights, and his staff. We thought it was a good idea. We thought that often the government will steal good ideas off backbenchers. I say not this government all governments. All governments do it. And they say, “Oh, well, we were going to do something like this anyway.” But look, to their credit, they have been very helpful. And so we had a number of meetings with them. And so here we are. The work begins now. We’ll hopefully be able to come down and see you in Albury, and we’ll have public meetings and we’ll hear from landowners and we’ll talk to local journalists and we’ll invite the public to come along and hear what they’ve got to say. I can’t think of who’s going to be opposing it except for there’ll be one little group, our favorite group, Toeer. The bureaucrats will have less to do. [End interview]

Well, of course, and they love nothing more than to make life more complicated because it keeps them busy with their little make-work schemes. So, you’ve managed to get from essentially the genesis of this idea or at least the introduction of this idea to yourself to the point where an inquiry is getting up in only sort of 90 days. What can people expect from here? People who don’t follow politics may not have an understanding of, unfortunately, just how drawn-out these processes can be. What’s the process going forward? What are you hoping for is the outcome from this inquiry? How long is it going to take? And then how long should we expect it to be before people really can actually start to turn soil on their own properties?

[From interview]

There’ll be seven or eight members of the inquiry. They’ll be members of the Legislative Council. I’ll be the chairman of the inquiry. We’ll have an initial meeting which will be just a closed meeting of the members. We’re going to map out a plan. Roughly what it will be is we will want to go and have because this is not going to apply to the greater Sydney metropolitan area this is a rural initiative.
And so we’re going to go and have probably half a dozen public meetings across New South Wales, and you know coastal areas, regional areas, highlands areas, you know, all sorts of different areas and we’ll speak to the local councilors and we’ll speak to local property owners. So then we get all the and we’ll also invite public submissions. Now sometimes you can get 500 public submissions, which we’ve got to go through. And then the committee will then at the end of this process, which I’m guessing we’ll be reporting about next February, maybe March. The committee then comes down with a final report, which we hope will be a unanimous report. We then deliver that report to the Parliament, and then we turn it into a final form of legislation, and then we vote on it. It’s very, very rare for a crossbench MP’s bill to become law because either the government hijacks it or the government says, “I’m not quite right.” But look, I think we might be able to get this through. [End interview]

So judging by just the length and the number of steps in that process, I feel like I’ve already grown a beard and turned into Rip Van Winkle by the time this is likely to actually be in front of Parliament. I mean, I’m guessing that this is not the kind of thing that could be accomplished this year. But are we talking next year or do we have to temper our expectations and say that it could even be the year after that?

[From interview] My hope is it’s going to come into effect from the 1st of July next year. [End interview]

That would be amazing. That would be amazing. Look, I know some councilors down this way. I’m in the southern part of New South Wales who I know some councils who would be very enthusiastic supporters of such an initiative and I’ll do what I can to facilitate that little bit. But I know of course you and the Libertarian Party, you have all the contacts and you have the ability to pull something like this off. So John, I say more power to your arm, more strength to your arm. I think this is a wonderful initiative and let’s hope that this is just a part of the continued return to common sense that I do sense is happening here in Australia. John, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your day to talk to the Topher project.

[From interview] Thanks so much for your interest, Topher. I really appreciate it. [End interview]

Cheers! Well, that was John Ruddick, MP, and I look forward to those reforms coming through. Let’s just hope that he is able to move that quickly and get this done by July 2026. That would be great news for lots of rural landowners in New South Wales, and it’s something that I hope will then get copied throughout Australia.

My name is Topher Field. This is the Topher project, and I am 100% viewer supported. So, please buy me a coffee via the button that you’ll find at topherfield.net and make sure you head over to goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com and check out my books, my DVDs, and my merch in a range of designs all available in t-shirts, long sleeve t-shirts, and hoodies. And in the process, you’re going to be helping me to keep bringing you stories like this one.

Thank you so much for watching to the end. The YouTube algorithm loves you and so do I. Please like, comment with your thoughts about this legislation and maybe some suggestions on what you’d like to see tackled next. Make sure you’ve subscribed. I’m closing in on 100,000 subscribers, which is actually a little bit exciting. I’ve got to be honest. I’m looking forward to hitting that milestone.

So, please click the subscribe button to help me get there. Check out this YouTube video that it is recommending that you would enjoy because you’ve enjoyed this one.

And as always, think free.