Kellie Sloane – NSW Liberal Leader
Thank you
It is wonderful to be here tonight to reflect on the Legacy of Sir Robert Menzies.
I suspect that every Liberal Leader asks themselves at least once a week: What would Menzies do?
Well, with the fourth and final volume now published of the Menzies Legacy, I know where to reach when I need the answer.
Zachary this is an immense achievement.
To you and all those who have contributed to these four volumes, you have created the most comprehensive understanding of one of our greatest Prime Ministers.
Robert Menzies looms large for Liberals.
Not only as the founder of our party, but as a guiding light that reminds us of the enduring relevance of the values which underpin our cause:
Individual freedom.
Reward for effort.
Lean government.
A just and humane society.
Sixty years ago, on the 20th of January 1966, Robert Menzies announced his retirement.
He had led our nation twice as Prime Minister, serving for 18 years in total.
Much was written about Menzies when he retired and what would be his legacy.
Some of his detractors said he had achieved nothing of merit.
Many of them perhaps thought Menzies did not dream big enough for Australia.
But I think the Australian people are always the best judge.
There are two letters in the book, written by everyday Australians, to Robert Menzies when he announced his retirement that I think perfectly capture his achievements.
Veronica Hallahan from Panania wrote:
"Writing as an ordinary housewife and mother, you have given us everything we have today, the best of them is happiness, when I say happiness I mean just that, for 17 years you have given us employment and good wages and without these things we could not have happiness."
Peter Aldred of Vaucluse wrote:
"My children and my children's children will be better for your building. You were the vigorous architect through the period of our country's most astounding growth. You were our trusted architect who built well and faithfully, who perceived a greater future, enlarged the foundations and built a greater edifice."
For those detractors of Menzies that wanted something more of Menzies, it is clear they had lost sight of Menzies' commitment to the forgotten people of Australia.
He created the opportunities for an aspirational middle class to grow and flourish in Australia during his time as Prime Minister.
When he left office, unemployment was at 1.6%, inflation was roughly 2.7%.
But I would argue that Menzies greatest legacy was that of getting more Australians into a home.
In 1947 only 53% of homes in Australia were owner occupied; by 1966 it was 71%.
While some Labor MPs at the time called aspiring homeowners, 'little capitalists', Menzies understood that home ownership was the key to stability and providing a place for families to flourish.
In his own words, home ownership would give people:
"one little piece of earth with a house and garden which is ours; to which we can withdraw, in which we can be among our friends, into which no stranger may come against our will."
Tonight, I want to talk about Menzies legacy on housing and what Liberals today can take from it.
We don't look back to Menzies in some anachronistic yearning for the 50s and 60s with the white picket fence and EJ Holden parked in the driveway, but rather as a reminder of the values we hold as Liberals and why we must be ambitious to get more young Australians into their first home.
For Liberals helping young Australians into home ownership is not an end in itself, but rather the starting point that allows people to flourish and build their futures.
We know that home ownership is the primary foundation of long-term financial and social stability.
I want to start by setting the scene in NSW in 2026 when it comes to home ownership before reflecting further on the policy achievements of the Menzies government on housing. I acknowledge the incredible work of David Furse-Roberts and Christopher Beer who wrote chapters 13 and 14 of this book, which focus on housing.
The truth is it has never been harder for a young Australian to enter the housing market than it is right now.
Sydney has the unenviable record of being the second most expensive housing market in the world, trailing only Hong Kong.
More than half of 25–29-year-olds were homeowners in the 1980s. In the 2021 census, this figure dropped to less than 40%.
When I bought my first apartment the deposit was three times the average wage. Nowadays it is 11 times.
A household with a gross annual income of $100,000 which saves a 20 per cent deposit and does not exceed 30 per cent of their income on mortgage repayments can borrow enough for $513,000.
The median combined house and unit price in Sydney is $1.2 million.
And if you are a young professional, trying to save for a mortgage while renting you face skyrocketing rents.
Sydney is the most expensive city in Australia to rent.
The median rent is now $760 a week - increasing 4.1% over the course of 2025 and a 46.5% increase over the past 5 years for a unit.
Sydney renters are now typically paying $9,620 more than Melburnians.
Australians born in the 1990s are the first generation to earn less (in relative terms) than people born a decade before.
They have every right to be frustrated and feel let down with their leaders.
Picture this, you are a young professional in your early thirties. You are working hard in a job that you think pays well, you are aspirational and dream big for your future.
Perhaps you've fallen in love and are looking to start a family.
You are saving for a deposit, but your pathway to finding a home seems further out of reach.
You feel like no matter how hard you work; you are still going backwards.
You begin to picture your thirties stretching out in front of you and wonder if it will always mean renting. Facing those upheavals of regular moves. Never having a slice of land to call your own.
Pushing back starting your family or perhaps deciding against a family at all.
As liberals, we can talk all we want about reward for effort, but those words are meaningless if the reward is simply unattainable for more and more Australians.
One of the greatest failures of any society is to have a generation of its young people lose hope that tomorrow will be better than today.
Yet that is the situation many young people find themselves in in NSW.
As Liberals, we must restore that hope and reward the aspirations and efforts of young Australians by helping them into homes.
Now days we look back on Menzian era as the golden age of home ownership, but we must remember that when Menzies' tenure began in 1949, he inherited a housing crisis.
Australia was experiencing a rapid increase in immigration – 2 million new migrants between 1945 and 1965.
Housing building costs in Sydney had risen above an average of 10 per cent a year and by 1949 they were 28.1% higher than they were in 1947.
In fact, reports from the time set out that the cost to build a home had risen 150% from 1939 to 1949 in Sydney.
From 2016 to 2026 the increase in building costs was roughly 80%.
And in our state in 1949, we had a Labor Premier called McGirr who was failing to meet his promised housing targets.
An article from the Daily Mirror from 1950 referred to the 1947 election promise by the Premier that 90,000 homes would be built in the three years from 1947 but revealed he had delivered 43 per cent less than what had been promised.
They say history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes.
Today, NSW has a Labor Premier called Minns who promises big and underdelivers. The latest data shows that we are behind our housing target by, get this, 41%.
Menzies had a clear focus on boosting housing supply. He understood that one of the keys to boosting housing supply was the reduction of building costs.
In his bid to return to office in 1949, Menzies had vowed to review the imposts of costs on housing like sales taxes on home fittings and furniture.
In 1956, Menzies renegotiated the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement turning the focus away from creating a society of long-term renters to a society of homeowners. The agreement was recalibrated to allow 20 per cent and later 30 per cent of federal funding to be passed on to financial institutions for lending to people to either purchase or build housing.
This was consistent with our Liberal philosophy. Rather than giving people a handout, the Menzies Government were giving assistance with loans.
By 1963, Menzies had created the first standalone housing portfolio and introduced the Housing Savings Grant. This scheme offered cash grants for married or engaged couples under the aged of thirty-six to buy a home.
The Menzies Government established the Housing Loans Insurance Corporation in 1965 to provide a government supported housing loan scheme to help homeowners.
This scheme was designed to assist borrowers from being forced to borrow on oppressive terms by insuring approved lenders against loss arising from the making of loans for housing.
This insured many first home buyers could borrow nearly all the money they needed at a reasonable rate of interest.
In appraising the Menzies government's housing policies David Furse-Roberts writes:
"Menzies and his government sought to encourage greater home ownership as it provided a stable, secure dwelling place for family life to flourish. Families having autonomy over their property would be spared from the typically transient nature of leases and the destabilising effects these arrangements can have on family life."
Menzies understood that supply was essential to ensuring young people had access to affordable homes.
For the entirety of the time that he was Prime Minister from 1949 to 1966 the supply of housing grew faster than demand every year.
Between 1947 and 1971, the total stock of dwellings in Australia increased from about 1.92 million to 4.01 million.
Increasing this supply reduced the cost of housing. The number of weeks worked at an average wage required to purchase a median price house in a capital city declined from 301 in 1950 to 200 in 1955.
If we look at some of the Sydney suburbs, we can see Menzies achievements in home ownership clearly.
In Fairfield, home ownership rose from 68% in 1947 to 80% in 1961.
Today it is 38.9%.
In Parramatta, home ownership rose from 46% to 73%.
Today it is 45%.
When Menzies spoke of the Forgotten People he put at the heart home ownership as key to people's wellbeing and civic identity.
And he delivered on his vision for a home owning democracy.
But what are the lessons for today?
Firstly, as Liberals we cannot simply wax lyrical about the successes of sixty years ago with Menzies or twenty years ago with Howard and just declare we are the natural party of home ownership because of their achievements.
We must demonstrate that we are still that party by delivering a bold housing agenda.
We must extend the pact the Liberal Party had with young Australians of yesterday to today's generation of working young.
Those aspirational young people in their twenties and thirties who are working hard but no longer see the reward for effort that prior generations had.
We can't just speak about our values; we must live them in the policies we pursue.
Chris Minns and Labor have talked a big game on housing, but they simply aren't delivering.
They're 41% behind on their National Housing Accord targets.
In Victoria they are only 8.1% behind target.
Labor might be drawing circles on maps of where developers want to build homes, but they aren't actually delivering the affordable homes young people need.
1,567 construction companies went bankrupt in 2025, because the cost of business is too high.
Labor have removed the indexation of land tax, which only pushes up rents.
So, what will we do?
Under my leadership, the NSW Liberals and Nationals will deliver practical policies to deliver more houses for young Australians.
Our focus will be on boosting housing supply by cutting red tape and lowering taxes.
As I said when I became leader, I want to be a chippy or concreter's best friend.
Because unlike Labor, we understand that re-zonings only work if we reduce the barriers and higher taxes holding back construction.
Last week, new data showed that three quarters of the 115,000 apartments approved in Sydney since 2020 have not proceeded to construction due to high construction costs making them unfeasible.
Right now, 40% of the cost of building a single apartment in NSW is taxes and charges.
We will pause Labor's new $12,000 home tax until 30 June 2029 and then defer collection to when a house is completed, to help improve cash flow of projects.
We will restore the First Home Buyer Choice Program, giving buyers the option to pay a smaller annual land tax instead of a huge upfront bill.
When we introduced the program, 80% of new homeowners chose to access the program.
When you give people the choice, they don't choose stamp duty.
Before Labor axed the program, 13,361 individuals had accessed it.
Based on the most recent census, over 1 million people over the age of 55 in NSW occupy a three- or four-bedroom home of their own as a couples without children.
Many want to downsize but decide not to due to stamp duty.
We will encourage empty nesters to downsize by providing a stamp duty exemption, with appropriate thresholds, for downsizing older buyers.
We will have an ambitious plan for housing supply in NSW. We have already announced some of our plans which include:
The repurposing of the Long Bay Jail site for approximately 12,000 new homes.
State-led rezoning in Erskineville, McDonaldtown, Newtown and St Peters for 10,000 new homes.
Delivering the Camelia-Rosehill Place strategy for a further 10,000 new homes.
Housing growth needs to be matched with infrastructure provision. This isn't about building houses it is about building homes and the liveable communities that surround them.
That is why we have a plan to set up a $2 billion Community Benefit Fund to reward councils that meet and beat their housing commitments. That means funding for local roads, parks, schools and services tied to actual housing deliver.
And we will stand up to Canberra on record population growth.
These policies aren't the end of our plan. They are just the beginning.
We have more work to do in the lead up to the 2027 election to show the people of NSW that we have the ambitious agenda to deliver the homes and infrastructure for growing communities our state needs.
Robert Menzies did not build a home owning democracy by accident.
He built it because he understood that our country is strongest when people have a stake in it.
In doing so he made the Liberal Party the natural party of Government. Sixty years later, we face the very real risk that the Liberal Party becomes the natural party of opposition if we do not once again renew our commitment to growing home ownership.
We won't honour the legacy of Menzies by simply reminiscing about our past achievements.
We will honour it by winning government and delivering the homes and stronger economy the people of NSW deserve.
Our task is not to recreate the Australia of the 1950s but recreate the opportunities for Australians that defined it.
To once again back people's aspirations.
To give hope to those who have lost it.
To renew that time honoured promise that if you work hard and do your bit you can get ahead.
That is our responsibility.
That is our mission.
That is what we will deliver if we are elected in March 2027.
