‘Unholy alliance’: Critics slam big garages bill set to force cars off SA streets
An “unholy alliance” has formed against Labor’s bill to force new SA homes to include larger garages. It is one of at least 14 pieces of legislation the upper house is set to assess this week, with one MLC saying the government is “treating the upper house like some sort of sausage factory”.
South Australia’s upper house of state parliament will this week vote on Labor’s bill that would make it mandatory for new houses to include garage space for at least two cars if they have two or more bedrooms.
The controversial bill has critics from both the South Australian Greens and the development sector warning the changes would “entrench car reliance” and essentially create a “car parking tax” on the cost of a building in the midst of a housing crisis.
The Statutes Amendment (Vehicle Parking and Urban Renewal) Bill 2025 is one of at least 14 pieces of legislation the upper house would consider this week, alongside proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act, a bill to crack down on copper theft, and four private members’ bills including Sarah Game’s, which would deliver more penalties for the loss of an unborn baby through criminal acts.
“We’re sitting at 11 today, and we’ll be sitting likely till midnight every night,” Greens MLC Robert Simms told InDaily.
“The government is cramming it through, treating the upper house like some sort of sausage factory. It’s pretty poor form.”
The Vehicle Parking and Urban Renewal Bill is one of the most contentious on the docket, with the South Australian chief executive of the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) slamming the government’s approach. It passed the lower house earlier this year.
“Having a car parking tax essentially, adding to the cost of building and hitting housing affordability in the middle of a housing crisis, is just not the right approach,” UDIA SA chief executive Liam Golding told InDaily.
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The state government claimed the Bill would help solve the problem of people clogging suburban streets with parked cars creating “amendable suburbs”.
However, Golding said residents would be unlikely to use both garage spaces to park cars if the legislation was passed, and that it would affect just 1.5 per cent of the housing stock on a year-on-year basis.
“What this would do is give more space for people’s home gyms,” he said.
“You’ll be waiting decades before you’re ‘solving the problem’.”
Golding was worried it would mean scarce land would have to be used for “housing a car, rather than housing people”.
“You’re going to be affecting liveability while pushing costs up,” Golding said.
“What we want to see is the industry to be able to have the flexibility to deliver walkable neighbourhoods, to deliver neighbourhoods that people want to live in, which are well connected and allow for people to have that lifestyle that we see for the future, for everyone.
“I think that it’s fundamentally the wrong approach to be creating legislative and regulatory red tape at a time when we just want to be delivering housing supply as quickly as possible.”
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The Property Council of Australia’s South Australian executive director Bruce Djite agreed, and told InDaily that the bill “does nothing to fix congestion on our streets”.
“Any legislation that decreases supply and increases the cost of housing in the middle of a housing crisis is a terrible piece of policy.”
Simms said the bill would “further entrench car reliance at a time when we should be starting to encourage other modes of transport”.
“If you encourage more car usage and particularly encourage the use of larger vehicles, that’s just going to increase congestion and not to mention carbon emissions,” Simms said.
He said the fact that the Greens were on the same page as development groups “just demonstrates how ludicrous the idea is when you have both sides of politics coming out concerned about it”.
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In a statement, Opposition housing spokesperson Michelle Lensink said her party had “a range of amendments that we’re hoping the government will sensibly consider”.
Housing and Urban Development Minister Nick Champion was spruiking the bill on ABC Radio this week saying it would “make sure that people have amenable suburbs”.
“What we see here is an unholy alliance between extreme Greens ideology against cars and impracticality and a sort of unwillingness to acknowledge that cars have got bigger as garages have stayed the same size,” Champion said.
“Of course we have the other end of town, the property sector and the Liberal Party of course, blocking the bill because they don’t want to entertain any change, even sensible change, to the current arrangements.”
The housing minister warned that if the bill failed in the upper house, Labor would make larger garages an election issue, “and we will let the people sort it out”.
“What we have got here is an unwillingness to entertain what is an entirely sensible reform,” he said.
“We know cars are getting bigger, what we are proposing to do is make single garages bigger, that is a sensible thing to do.
“This won’t impact yield, it will allow sensible strategic infill to occur and the CBD to grow where we know we have public transport but in those areas where people are reliant on cars, they will get to have a garage they can actually park their car in.”
