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New South Wales will make the biggest single investment in social housing in the state's history, spending $5.1 billion to build 8,400 new and refurbished social homes, with a significant proportion to go to women and children fleeing domestic violence.
Labor's 2024-25 budget, which records a $3.6 billion deficit, has promised 30,000 new homes all up through several new housing schemes, including a build-to-rent program for essential workers and the sale of public land to developers.
Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said his "must haves and not nice-to-haves" budget "carefully absorbs" a $11.9 billion hit from a loss in GST revenue, rather than creating "misery" by making cuts to services.
Mr Mookhey said the housing measures were aimed at helping people break into the Sydney housing market as the government shifted it's "focus" to building new homes.
"I don't think we should be slamming the door on home ownership to the next generation," Mr Mookhey said.
"NSW needs more homes, more homes for renters, more homes for key workers, more homes for people escaping violence at home."
Housing dedicated for domestic violence victim-survivors, essential workers
Mr Mookhey said his new social housing measures would deliver 8,400 new social housing homes, 6,200 of which will be new, while the rest are old social homes that will be knocked down and rebuilt.
Half of those homes will be kept for women and children fleeing domestic violence.
More than 34,000 women and children are on the social housing waiting list, forming up 59.5 per cent of applicants.
About 5,000 of the women are assessed as in urgent need, often escaping or at high risk of domestic and family violence.
Homelessness NSW CEO Dominique Rowe said more still needed to be done to help victims of domestic violence.
"Three-thousand homes for people escaping domestic and family violence means that woman and children that are fleeing very violent homes will have a place to go to," she said.
"We still have 58,000 people on the waiting list for social homes in News South Wales and we need to do more than what we've got at the moment."
Additionally, an audit of NSW government owned land has identified 44 sites which will be sold to Housing NSW, Landcom or property developers, to build 21,000 new homes.
Mr Mookhey said Landcom and Housing NSW would get first dibs in the land sales, with private developers able to develop the land and sell it on the private market after that.
The locations of those pieces of land are yet to be announced, but most are in Sydney.
On Sunday the government announced $450 million for an as-yet undefined list of essential workers, through a built-to-rent scheme run by government development agency, Landcom.
A further $200 million will go to NSW Health for essential worker accommodation in regional NSW.
Master Builders Association of NSW executive director Brian Seidler welcomed the release of government land to build new homes.
"A record investment for social and affordable housing for our most vulnerable will improve the critical undersupply of housing in this area of the market," he said.
"Build-to-rent projects helps to diversify the NSW housing market and provides an opportunity to make rental accommodation more affordable."
Addressing bulk-billing 'freefall'
The budget's second major feature is a $189 million injection into bulk-billing, which the government said will incentivise GPs to bulk-bill patients.
Mr Mookhey said he was acting on a recent survey which found 48 per cent of adults were cutting back on healthcare appointments due to the cost.
With bulk-billing rates in "freefall", Mr Mookhey said GP practices that bulk-bill 80 per cent of their patients in metropolitan Sydney – 70 per cent in the rest of the state – can claim a complete tax rebate to for the payroll tax they otherwise would have to pay for the wages of contractor GPs.
Mr Mookhey said GP clinics would also be exempt from paying back taxes they might owe on contractor wages.
Rebekah Hoffman, chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners NSW and ACT, has welcomed the investment.
"This gives GPs across NSW certainty that they can continue to operate and keep their doors open for patients, without fear of being hit with a huge tax bill that will shut them down," she said.
Mr Mookhey defended the lack of cost-of-living measures in the budget, pointing to toll relief measures which are funded to the tune of $560 million over two years, and to the new bulk-billing measures.
Lacking GST revenue part of deficit problem
The state government blamed the Commonwealth for an $11.9 billion loss in the 2024-25 financial year, due to a reduction in the state's share of GST revenue.
The Commonwealth Grants Commission decision about how much GST revenue NSW would receive was made earlier this year, and has been foreshadowed by the treasurer as the most significant hit to the state's finances.
Mr Mookhey has said the reduction in money was not expected and has contributed to a $3.6 billion deficit this year, which is a $6 billion improvement on last financial year.
But he said the government would not impose sweeping cuts on the state as a result.
"We refuse to respond to the Grant Commission's absurdity by imposing austerity on NSW," Mr Mookhey told parliament in his budget speech.
"That would lead to misery."
He said the state's budgetary outlook was "consistent with a soft landing", with unemployment predicted to rise to 4.5 per cent in the second half of 2025.
The government is also predicting interest rates will start to drop in the first half of 2025.