Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore has downplayed the seemingly toxic relationship between Town Hall and the NSW state government as new projections show the population ballooning.
Mike Baird’s state government gave businesses two votes in the recent election, a move seen as likely to help Moore’s opponents in Saturday’s election. Previously, the state government passed legislation – labelled the “get Clover laws” – banning state MPs from sitting on local councils, forcing Moore to give up her seat in the NSW parliament.
Both moves seemed to backfire, with Moore winning the council election in a landslide on Saturday. And when Moore was pushed out of state parliament, Alex Greenwich, an independent backed by Moore, won the seat.
But Moore played down the seemingly toxic relationship. “Well I think media gets hold of a line and they keep repeating it,” she said on ABC radio on Monday.
“I work very well with many of the ministers,” she said. “And of course city staff work really well with those government agencies.”
On Monday the NSW government released new projections showing the city’s population will surge faster than previously predicted.
In 2014, government projections suggested the Sydney local government area would grow to 273,500 residents by 2031. But the new figures indicate it will have 292,350 people in 2031, and will balloon to 315,200 by 2036.
By 2031, the Sydney metropolitan region will have more than 100,000 extra people, compared with the 2014 projections. That would mean a population of 6 million by 2031 and 6.4 million by 2036.
By far the biggest growth would be in the outer south-western suburb of Camden, where the population was expected to almost triple by 2036, compared with 2011. Parramatta and the Hills district were the next biggest growers, each expected to roughly double in that period.
They were followed by Strathfield and Liverpool, each expected to grow by about 75%.
The fashionable areas of Mosman on the north shore and Woollahra in the eastern suburbs were projected to grow the least in that period, expanding by 9.9% and 6.3% respectively.
Planning minister Rob Stokes told Fairfax Media the surprising figures were the “growing pains of a great global city”.
He called for a “Barcelona model” of development, with a growth in medium density small houses, rather than the “Shanghai model”, meaning a surge in huge apartment blocks.
“There are going to be areas of towers [in] central parts, but we don’t want that across the urban fabric,” Stokes said.
He said he would make it easier for developers to build terrace houses and small developments in established suburbs and the fringes of the city.
