Housing Plan For Rosehill Mini-City Axed In Turf Club Vote
Image: saverosehill_/X
A major component of New South Wales’ response to the housing crisis has hit a fatal dead end, after Australian Turf Club (ATC) members rejected a proposal to sell the Rosehill Gardens racecourse to the state government for the development of 25,000 homes.
ATC chairman Peter McGauran, a proponent of the scheme, announced the 44-56 percent voting outcome late on the afternoon of Tuesday 27 May.
“The ATC members today voted not to sell Rosehill Gardens. That means it’s finished, taken off the table,” McGauran told reporters. He said that the proposal “will not proceed in any shape or form into the future.”
Government has other plans
Premier Chris Minns shared the chairman’s sentiment, calling the rejected proposal “a golden opportunity” whilst saying that the Government has other plans in the works.
“I think it’d be really disingenuous of me if I just said, ‘Oh, no big deal.’ I think it would have been great for Sydney,” Minns said.
Minns said that some of the Government’s plans would “ruffle a few feathers” but also that they were imperative to alleviate the shortage of housing. “Not everyone will love them, but they are absolutely necessary for Sydney,” the Premier said.
Rocky road to rejection
Turf Club members opposed to the deal with the Government, which could have pocketed the club $5 billion, bemoaned an apparent lack of transparency in the process. That process began in December 2023 when the parties reached an understanding by which the Government would buy the site.
From that point on, the project has been the subject of contention, with contamination fears raised in the same month.
In March of last year, City of Parramatta councillor and former Deputy Lord Mayor Michelle Garrard declared that “Rosehill will become a ghetto” if the plan went ahead.
Then two months later, Liberals and cross-benchers in the state parliament voted successfully to establish a committee to investigate the proposal. Premier Minns was referred to the corruption watchdog in December over his relationship with ATC government relations head Steve McMahon, though the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) declined to investigate.
There were also concerns about where a replacement course might be built, with the 1880s-originating brick pit at Sydney Olympic Park viewed as an option.
High profile divisions
Vocal opponents of the deal included prominent trainers Gai Waterhouse, Chris Waller and Richard Freedman, as well as state MP Mark Latham. In addition to McGauran, Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys and entrepreneur John Singleton backed the sale.
Singleton ridiculed opposition to the deal, referring to the site of the racecourse as “a bit of rotten land up in Rosehill” and spruiking the $5 billion which was offered.
“If you had asked the people to stand up, who went to Rosehill in the last five years, it would prove my point,” he said of the attendees at the meeting.
Like Singleton, who joked that the average age of Rosehill attendees was 110, McGauran referred to lesser interest shown in horse racing by younger Australians.“It’s more of a challenge because we don’t have the funding that could have been available to us through the sale, but nonetheless, we are a viable and strong club and the future is in our hands, and we’re united behind shared and common goals,” the chairman said.
