Shadow cabinet shake-up reveals Sloane’s housing election stance

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The NSW Liberals’ most prominent YIMBY Chris Rath will be the Coalition’s new planning and housing shadow minister as Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane unveils her frontbench to take to next year’s state election.

Sloane will announce her new shadow cabinet on Tuesday, after a delay prompted by the Bondi shooting that killed 15 people in her electorate on December 14.

Kellie Sloane and the Liberal wall of fame in NSW Parliament House.

Rath’s appointment signals that Sloane will follow the lead of her predecessor Mark Speakman in pursuing a pro-housing agenda ahead of next March’s poll. Former planning spokesman Scott Farlow will move to the treasury portfolio, replacing leader in the upper house Damien Tudehope.

Tudehope, a solicitor, will take on the attorney-general portfolio, in a move expected after Sloane intervened in the long-running workers’ compensation saga and overruled Tudehope’s opposition to one key element that was part of the six-month stand-off.

Sloane personally stepped in to end the stalemate on workers’ compensation reforms, which will include freezing insurance premiums for 18 months, sparing businesses from big price rises.

In the first policy win for the new leader, Sloane brokered the deal with Treasurer Daniel Mookhey last month, but it meant walking away from Tudehope’s unwavering commitment to ensuring more psychologically injured workers would not be cut off from regular compensation payments.

Liberal member Chris Rath has been promoted to opposition housing spokesman.

Speakman, a minister in the Baird, Berejiklian and Perrottet governments, will be included in Sloane’s frontbench, although his new position has not yet been confirmed.

The Liberals will take back police and education. Former education minister, Nationals MP Sarah Mitchell, is to have responsibility for health. Former Nationals leader Dugald Saunders, who resigned suddenly in November, will not be in the shadow cabinet.

The Nationals will also have a spokesperson for regional crime, in response to concerns about high rates of youth crime in some areas of NSW, where car theft and break-ins have become commonplace in some communities.

Rath, one of the moderates who helped install Sloane as the new opposition leader in November, has been one of the Coalition’s most vocal supporters of increased density and more housing.

In 2023, Rath, then the party’s whip in the upper house, used a late night speech to parliament to call on his fellow Liberals to ignore pressure from “not in my backyard” Baby Boomers in their electorates who oppose new housing.

Sloane, the MP for Vaucluse, was elected unopposed as opposition leader in November after a damaging period for the party as it stumbled with how to convince Speakman to stand down.

In her first comments as leader, Sloane said she supported opening a ghost railway station at Woollahra in her electorate and that she was “pro-housing” but not at the expense of “sloppy planning”.

“I think people are willing to accept housing anywhere provided that it’s done well, and my concern is that Labor is drawing circles on maps, and they’re building blocks,” she said.

“We need to build homes, and we need to build communities.”

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