Planning official used husband’s AI tool to fast-track hundreds of Sydney housing proposals

3 hours ago 2

Hundreds of major developments fast-tracked by the NSW government’s flagship Housing Delivery Authority will be independently reviewed after the planning official in charge of the agency was stood down for using an unauthorised AI tool to assess the proposals.

Aoife Wynter, the executive director of panels and housing delivery in the HDA and long-time planning official, has been placed on forced leave after it emerged she allowed AI software developed by her husband to be used on assessments.

NSW planning official Aoife Wynter has been removed from her post for using an unauthorised AI tool to assess major housing projects.

The planning department insists the unauthorised software was used only to collate publicly available information, but the revelations are a blow to the HDA, which has the power to set significant developments on a fast track, bypassing local councils.

Wynter was contacted for comment.

Wynter’s husband is a former engineering executive at Atlassian, where, according to his LinkedIn profile, “he helped to build different parts of the App developer platform”. He took a career break, according to his public profile, where he worked on his own software projects.

Sources with knowledge of the issue, but not permitted to comment publicly, said Wynter’s husband developed software that was designed to speed up assessments.

A spokesperson for the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure said it had “identified an issue in relation to unauthorised software that was used to collate information and present it in a standardised format”.

“It was not used to generate any recommendations and has not impacted on the robustness or accuracy of information provided to the HDA,” the spokesperson said.

“While there is no indication of errors or inaccuracies in those summaries, the program is no longer being used and out of caution, the minister for planning and public spaces has requested for an independent review to be undertaken.”

The spokesperson said all state-significant proposals go through full merit-based assessment.

The department said it did not comment on staffing matters, but the Herald has confirmed that Wynter has been stood down from her position.

The planning department will now order an independent review of all the developments assessed with the AI tool as the government grapples with how to meet its ambitious housing target of building 377,000 new homes by 2029.

Announced in November last year, the HDA was the state government’s landmark policy to accelerate planning decisions for large-scale projects amid the worsening housing crisis.

Wynter’s team assesses developers’ expressions of interest before making recommendations to a three-person panel.

The panel includes the Premier’s Department secretary Simon Draper, Department of Planning secretary Kiersten Fishburn, and Infrastructure NSW chief executive Tom Gellibrand.

Under the expedited approval pathway, housing developments in Greater Sydney with a capital cost of $60 million, the average for 100 or more homes, can have their application assessed by the HDA rather than councils, and be declared as state significant.

Since November last year, analysis by the Herald shows 609 projects have been assessed by the authority across 16 meetings since February 7. Of those, about 300 have been recommended for fast-tracking.

University of Sydney Emeritus Professor Peter Phibbs, an expert in urban planning and policy, said while the criteria under the HDA was not complicated, planners could not rely on AI to scan assessments given its known faults with hallucination.

“Certainly, the way the process works in planning, if someone makes an error at the start of the chain, everything subsequently falls over,” he said.

“Someone would have to double-check all those projects that had gone through that process to ensure nothing had slipped through the cracks.”

The government has said the HDA would potentially shave a year off assessment times and marked a “significant change to how we bring major housing developments to market”.

However, at the time of its announcement, Local Government NSW president Darriea Turley said the HDA was a “Christmas gift for developers” that would remove the community’s voice.

“This new pathway will deliver windfall gains for developers and worsen congestion, create overcrowding and remove the safeguards that protect communities from inappropriate and ad-hoc development,” she said.

“The housing crisis is serious and requires genuine, evidence-based solutions, not scapegoating that ignores the broader challenges in housing construction that are beyond the control of the planning system.”

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